Week 19: Chasing Amy
Looking for a good romantic comedy makes me feel like the hero of Cormac McCarthy's The Road. I feel like I am scouring a post-apocalyptic wasteland of films, looking for sustenance in a world where most has been consumed countless years before. Every so often I will come across a glimmer of hope, only to find blood-thirsty cannibals hiding out to eat me. Yes, the "Rom-Com" is my least favorite genre- one so overplayed that I barely have hope for the category at all. I become defeatist and give up. Then a movie like Chasing Amy comes along and restores my faith in humanity.
To put it bluntly, most romantic comedies are pieces of shit. This is not to say that I am against, "chick flicks." On the contrary, I enjoy a good romance as much as the next guy (one of my favorite movies of all time is Almost Famous). What I dislike is formula. There are only so many times I can hear the story of the guy and the girl that "were meant for each other- and just didn't know it" or the "man and woman fall in love, fall out of love, fall back into love" routine. Spare me. I want to scream to the top of the heavens- "Give me something original, for fuck's sake!"
Yes, I know. I just used the word "fuck" in a professional review. If you are offended I daresay you may dislike Chasing Amy, one of the best and most original romantic comedies ever made. Written and directed by Kevin Smith, that great, foul-mouthed master of dialogue, Chasing Amy may be the most honest love story I have ever seen. Everything in the picture is frank, direct and brutally truthful. I do not mean to be cliché, but I must; there are few movies that can have you laughing hysterically one moment and in tears the next.
Holden (Ben Affleck) and Banky (Jason Lee) are two comic book artists living in New Jersey. Together they co-write the hit comic “Bluntman and Chronic” featuring the misadventures of Smith characters Jay and Silent Bob (Jason Mewes, Smith). Holden meets Alyssa (Joey Lauren Adams), a fellow comic writer, and is immediately smitten. Alyssa is beautiful, has a charming personality and a raspy voice. Holden’s world comes to a screeching halt when he finds that Alyssa is actually a lesbian. His conservative ideologies shattered, Holden begins a friendship with Alyssa. The two finally begin to have a relationship, but things begin crashing down when Holden begins to listen to his own sexual insecurities more than his heart.
I am pretty sure that was the shortest plot summary ever featured on this website. Here is a movie that is less concerned about plot arcs than character ones. What makes this movie great is not what happens, but how it happens. This is not a visual extravaganza, but a small and deliberate film. We sit, listen to the characters talk, and deal through their issues. We are always completely engaged.
The dialogue in this movie is among the best there is. You can just listen to Chasing Amy and be entertained. You don’t even necessarily need the images on the screen. This film has a great deal of colorful language and at times it is completely filthy. There is no one working in movies today that can write profanity like Kevin Smith. Smith came from the generation of Indie Hollywood in the early 1990’s, along with other great filmmakers such as Quentin Tarantino and Robert Rodriguez. All three filmmakers know how to write dialogue that is snappy and interesting, but none are even remotely as funny (or realistic) as Smith. This is not to say that Smith is a better director than Tarantino (far from it), he just makes us laugh a great deal more.
This is the third film in Smith’s View Askewniverse series. Each movie in this series crosses over with other films of the universe, making each a portion of an overarching canon, much like in a comics universe. Alyssa is name dropped in Smith’s Clerks and appears in Mallrats and Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back. The main staples of his universe are the characters Jay and Silent Bob- two idiotic drug dealers that happen to have a hand in pretty much everyone’s business. In retrospect, Jay and Silent Bob are my least favorite characters Smith has created. I prefer the hopeless romantics looking for something more- like Holden in this film or Dante and Randall from the Clerks films. This may be an ever expanding universe, but one strand is always the same- men looking for love. Judd Apatow is often cited as the “founder of the bromantic comedy”. This is an outrage! Smith created the concept of “bro-mance” (a comedy full of dick, sex and fart jokes that actually has a heart) a good decade before Apatow made it popular. Moreover, Smith’s characters are not dirty for the sake of being dirty- they swear because it is the only way they know how to communicate. There are sequences in this film that are so both completely raw and profoundly honest. One of my favorites is a brilliant scene towards the beginning of the film where Banky informs Alyssa that he has completely written off performing oral sex with women:
Banky: “I stopped dropping to my knees; it got to be too frustrating. I lost my tolerance with the bullshit baggage that comes with eating girls out.”
Alyssa: "If you say the smell, I will slug you."
Banky: "It's not the smell. The smell is good. It's the matter of not knowing how to do it properly. My mother brought me up to believe that if I can't do something right, I shouldn't do it at all. Of course, my father told me she gave lousy head, but that's beside the point."
Alyssa: At least you blame yourself for your sexual inadequacies."
Banky: “No, I blame them. Chicks never help you out. They never tell you what to do. Most of them are all self conscious about the "smell factor" that they sit their frozen like a deer in headlights. When a chick goes down on me, I let her know where to go- and what the status is. You gotta handle it like CNN and The Weather Channel- constant updates."
This dialogue is not only pretty damn funny but truthful as well, at least for Banky. There are countless other scenes with this kind of forthright dialogue. Some of them are more comedic, such as when Banky and Holden’s gay friend Hooper (Dwight Ewell) tell the boys that Archie is a “sister.” Others are just as graphically frank, but more profound- such as the scene where Alyssa and Holden define what their definition of sex is on a playground. (The hand gesture that Alyssa makes on the swing set is timeless.)
The film is a bit of a mixed bag as far as acting is concerned. Lee is not always entirely convincing as Banky, and most extras or bit roles are absurdly over-acted. These missteps are minor in comparison to the performances by Affleck and Lauren Adams. Both have scenes of genuine greatness. Lauren Adams in particular gives a performance with incredible depth and beauty- specifically towards the end of the movie. She plays Alyssa as someone that knows what she is looking for and defies labels while still maintaining a sense of self-awareness and dignity. Her performance makes the audience fall in love with her. We constantly understand what she is going through and why she reacts the way she does to Holden’s immaturities and ridiculous proposals. The Affleck performance is equally captivating. Say what you will about Ben Affleck, but he has a way with dialogue like this. His delivery at times can be forced (especially in one of the film’s lengthier monologues) but we always believe in his character.
What makes Chasing Amy so special is that we fully explore all characters points of view. We know why Holden loves Alyssa but can certainly relate to how he feels about her past. When we think about Alyssa, we realize just how wrong Holden is in trying to fix her. A second viewing even gives greater insight into Banky (there is a reason he seems preoccupied with dick jokes). In the end there is Smith, as Silent Bob- fully confident in telling his tale at the diner. We shouldn’t care about what the loser drug dealer has to say, but we do. This is not a movie about love, but the pursuit of it. We have all Chased Amy in one point of our lives. We realize the relationship is doomed to failure far ahead of the characters that are living in the moment. We related to this movie, we see our own doomed relationships and infatuations in hindsight; hopefully we see what we have learned about ourselves in the process. We may not talk, walk, or look like these characters- but we know what they are feeling.
Review and Analysis by Shaun Henisey
Cast and Credits:
Holden : Ben Affleck
Alyssa : Joey Lauren Adams
Banky : Jason Lee
Hooper : Dwight Ewell
Jay : Jason Mewes
Silent Bob : Kevin Smith
Miramax Pictures present A Kevin Smith Film. Produced by Scott Mosier, Bob and Harvey Weinstein.
Written and Directed by Kevin Smith.
Running Time : 114 Minutes. Rated R For Strong, Graphic Sex-Related Dialogue, Language, Sexuality and Drug Content.