Kevin Smith Collection, The (Blu-ray)

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Four or five years ago, the senior class at Illinois Wesleyan University asked Kevin Smith to be their commencement speaker. Surprisingly, he accepted, and I was in the audience for his talk--the last commencement speaker, by the way, that the University allowed seniors to choose. For the occasion, Smith said that he felt gypped not to have a shared four-year history with the graduating class, and so he took the liberty of constructing one . . . which he shared with the audience, using colorful language (yep, including the ol' F-word) and the real names of graduating seniors. "Hey," he said at one point, addressing a young woman and a young man who sat somewhere in a crowd of caps and gowns, "remember that wild threesome we had behind Presser Hall?" or something to that effect. As I listened, I wondered what the parents' of those students were thinking. Afterwards, I spoke with our college president and provost, who were visibly shaken, and I had to laugh. If they had bothered to check out even one of Smith's films, they would have seen that colorful language, irreverence, and slacker humor are what he does best. But it also occurred to me that they should consider themselves lucky that the senior class invited Silent Bob to speak for them, rather than Jay.

"The Kevin Smith 3-Movie Collection" brings two films to Blu-ray for the first time--"Clerks" and "Chasing Amy"--along with "Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back." At first glance, you wonder: Since "Dogma," "Clerks II," "Zack and Miri Make a Porno," and "Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back" have already been released on Hi-Def, why not make "Mallrats" the third film in this set? Fans are still waiting for Smith's second film to come out in Hi-Def. But the answer is simple: "Mallrats" was released by Gramercy Pictures, not Miramax. Bummer.

But for those who already have "Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back" on Blu-ray, Disney/Miramax is not going to make you buy it twice. All three films in this collection are available singly in Hi-Def Blu-ray.

Clerks (1994)
Smith couldn't have made a bigger splash with a low-budget debut film than if he had jumped from a high-dive platform while holding the camera. Though this 92-minute black-and-white film cost under $30,000 to make, it has grossed more than 3 million and won the Award of the Youth and the Mercedes-Benz Award at the Cannes Film Festival. Since then it's become a cult classic, something that has mystified Smith, who says it's been overpraised. And you know what? I agree with him. This day-in-the-life film, which follows convenience store clerk Dante (Brian O'Halloran) from the minute he opens the store until closing time, has plenty of truth-in-comedy moments, but there's a film-student quality to it. Much of the dialogue comes in sections that are too long, and the actors sometimes stumble over it, intent on remembering and delivering the lines rather than working on their acting and emotional place. And one of the film's most famous scenes, where Dante's ex-girlfriend goes into a men's room where an old man has retreated to use the bathroom (and a porno magazine) and thinks it's Dante . . . well, if you think about it too long, it ain't happenin', for any number of reasons. So much for logic.

But as John J. Puccio noted in his review, "The movie is mostly a succession of conversations, some of them hilarious, others not so," and it "becomes tedious, too, as the guys debate stale philosophy, bicker constantly, even have a knockdown, drag-out brawl late in the story." The "guys" are Dante and his friend Randal (Jeff Anderson), who share a history but nothing else. Dante is laid-back and accommodating, a push-over whether it's a customer doing the asking or a boss doing the telling. Randal, meanwhile, is a clerk from the video shop next door. He's acerbic and rude to everyone, and doesn't have even a smidgeon of the sense of responsibility that Dante has. He doesn't care if a couple of pothead drug dealers named Jay and Silent Bob (Jason Mewes and Smith himself) hang out in front of the video store, and he closes the store whenever he feels like wandering over to the Quick-Stop to chat. Which is often.

Dante's current girlfriend Veronica (Marilyn Ghigliotti) and former girlfriend Caitlin (Lisa Spoonhauer) turn up, and there's more talk punctuated by more profanity and weird situations. Does it go anywhere? Does it say anything profound? That depends on whether you believe that what passes for philosophical discourse on the level of potheads and slackers is worth examining. Sometimes the scenes can be funny, sometimes they're painfully staged, sometimes they're pointedly NOT funny. But it's a first film, for crying out loud. If I had reviewed this when it first came out, I would have been inclined to give it a 7 out of 10 because it shows comic rhythms and a sense of dialogue-as-structure that's worth rewarding. Looking back, I'd have to agree with Smith that it's more flawed than those who've praised it seem to have noticed. But maybe that was because it was so uncommonly good, considering it was a first film that was shot on the cheap. Low expectations are a filmmaker's friend . . . anyone's, for that matter.

Fans of the film will be pleased that this Blu-ray includes both the 92-minute theatrical release and the 104-minute "first cut" that was apparently Smith's director's cut prior to getting it in shape for distribution.

Chasing Amy (1997)
Watch "Chasing Amy" immediately after "Clerks" and you'll see why Smith thinks the former is overrated. I'm not alone in thinking that "Chasing Amy" is Smith's best film. Dean Winkelspecht said the same thing in his DVD review, and there are a lot more out there who agree. "Chasing Amy" may not have the diamond-in-the-rough charm of "Clerks," but it's plenty offbeat on its own and plays virtual spin-the-bottle with the romantic comedy genre: boy meets girl, boy finds out girl is gay, boy figures what-the-hell and pursues her anyway, boy . . . oh boy. It's consistently funny, the characters are more fully drawn, and there's a range of honest emotions that are frankly missing from "Clerks," which was all about the funny lines and situations. With "Clerks," you never forgot that a writer was behind the dialogue; that's not the case here.

In Smith's world, everyone is best friends since childhood. In "Chasing Amy," old chums Holden (Ben Affleck) and Banky (Jason Lee) have created a comic book based on Jay and Silent Bob: Bluntman and Chronic. Affleck and Lee have great chemistry and come across as longtime best friends better than anyone did in "Clerks." But in this film, the comedy comes in layers. Holden is the artist and Banky the inker, and from the beginning, when we see fans at Comicon give Banky crap for being "only an inker," it becomes not only a running joke, but the tip of an exposed nerve that leads right to the core of his character. And when Holden (as in, Holden Caufield?) enters into a relationship with the Amy (Joey Lauren Adams) he's chased, but discovers she isn't exactly chaste, it causes a strain on all of their relationships.

Forget production values (which are, of course, considerably better). The level of writing, the level of acting, the scenic construction are all WAY beyond what Smith attempted in "Clerks." "Chasing Amy" is a smart and sophisticated movie that has raunchy elements in it, and considerably more complexity.

Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back (2001)
Aside from the "Star Wars" allusions, with this film Smith returns to the raunch 'n' roll of "Mallrats" and "Clerks" and the zaniness of all the stories that were told in those films but not always shown. Here, Smith puts them on camera, and if there's such a genre as stoner farce, this one qualifies. Upset that people are making money off of them--specifically, that their way-cool comic book has been bought by a studio and people are getting big bucks by making a movie based on them--Jay and Silent Bob vow to get their share of the pie but also to restore their "good name" that's been tarnished by an apparently bad film that's generated some pretty bad reviews and some hostile Internet-speak. Life imitating art imitating life?

As I wrote in my review of the Blu-ray when it first came out, fans of Kevin Smith, Jason Mewes, and their Jay and Silent Bob characters are going to like this more than the average filmgoer. It's the weakest film in this particular trio because it's the most uneven. Some of the most hilarious scenes poke fun at net-nerds, hitchhikers, and guys who obsess over the darnedest things. It's when the humor gets a little broader that it fails to hit the mark. The wild, Mel Brooks' style plot insanities that occur when this slacker duo gets to Hollywood can feel strained at times, whereas when Jay and Silent Bob get back to what made them appealing in the first place--those inane conversations in front of the video store that started it all--the humor gets back on track. As Jay tries to share his "insight" into male-female relationships, we get this funny line: "She didn't tell me to fuck off once when I was talking to her, or try to pull out the pepper spray. Yep. This could be the one." And when George Carlin gives the guys a lesson in hitchhiking and it backfires when Jay tries it out on a nun (Carrie Fisher) who picks them up, it's one of the few examples of ribald humor that works, and it does so because of the chatty, quasi-philosophical set-up.