The 4:30 Movie Review
The 4:30 Movie (2024) Film Review, a movie written and directed by Kevin Smith and starring Siena Agudong, Austin Zajur, Ken Jeong, Kate Micucci, Ming Chen, Nicholas Cirillo, Betty Aberlin, Reed Northrup, Method Man, Genesis Rodriguez, Ralph Garman, Sam Richardson, Jeff Anderson, Justin Long, Harley Quinn Smith, Jennifer Schwalbach Smith and Ernest O’Donnell.
The 4:30 Movie feels like a film so personal to writer/director, Kevin Smith that he probably should have made it a memoir instead of a feature length motion picture. This movie is full of jokes that people who were young in the 1980’s will “get” but even after paying careful attention to all the details Smith flings at his audience in the new picture, a lot of it went over my head and I’m very close to the type of characters presented in The 4:30 Movie. This film is ultimately a disappointment, but viewers may have a certain fondness for it given the audacity of Smith to present his story as uniquely as he does here. Unique doesn’t equate to good in this particular case, however.
Austin Zajur stars in the picture as the stand-in for Smith, Brian David, and the young Siena Agudong plays the girl of Brian David’s dreams, Melody Barnegat. They’re hanging out in the pool in the beginning of the movie while Melody’s mom (Kate Micucci) warns Brian to get Melody off his back. She’s literally hanging on to his back. Somehow, Brian asks Melody out on a date to the movies via a phone call and she’s all in for any movie except Poltergeist II which she has promised to see with her mom. Melody agrees to meet Brian at the movie theater at 4:30 to see a film with a poster that looks like it was inspired by Chevy Chase’s Fletch.
Unfortunately, Brian has friends. They’re two annoying male friends called Belly (Reed Northrup) and Burny (Nicholas Cirillo). This pair of friends makes watching the movie become a chore as they are typical stereotypical young males who seem like people Brian would go out of his way to avoid rather than go to the movie theater with. One of these friends makes offensive sex jokes and both of the actors who play the friends have nothing to work with.
Ken Jeong is the movie theater’s manager, Mike, who’s on the phone with Paramount when Brian’s mother makes an emergency breakthrough to ask Mike to get ahold of her son for a banal conversation that seems like it was made up on the spot. Jeong is humorous here but a little of him goes a long way as he kicks the friends out one at a time and eventually bans the three of them from the theater which jeopardizes Brian’s date which gets pushed back later than the original 4:30 plan.
Sam Richardson plays a wrestler with a soft side named Major Murder while Genesis Rodriguez plays Smith’s fanciful female usher who unconvincingly says everything that Smith probably wished the girl of his dreams said as well. Richardson and Rodriguez have small parts, but these roles speak volumes about what Smith is trying to say about the illusions of TV and the movies versus the reality of the people who are really around us.
When Siena Agudong’s Melody re-enters the picture, it picks up some momentum and there are some closing scenes that are pretty adorable. Zajur and Agudong have some pleasant interactions with Melody referring to something called BDE late in the picture which stands for Brian David energy. Cute. Really cute. Agudong is a fine young actress and she and Zajur can light up the screen together when Smith wants them to.
However, this is one of Smith’s lesser efforts overall. The dialogue isn’t sharp like it was in Clerks III. Smith probably wants the movie to be messy just like being a teenager is. However, the picture is ultimately undermined by the fact that most people won’t “get” at least half of the inside jokes. A trailer within the movie shows a nun during the day who is a hooker at night. That reminds me of the 1980’s movie Angel but it’s not exactly the plot of that film, so Smith runs away with himself. Ditto an ode to Flash Gordon with one of the movies that the boys watch. It feels like Flash Gordon for a minute or so then turns into something completely different. Huh? What, exactly, is Smith doing here? Only Smith knows.
That being said, The 4:30 Movie has some charm which could make it watchable for fans of the director’s previous work. Ken Jeong certainly tries hard while stars like Jason Lee and Justin Long put in brief cameos that seem earnest enough in spirit. However, Clerks III was close to perfection. This new picture is, for the most part, simply mediocre.
Rating: 5.5/10
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