DVD Review: Mallrats:Collector's Edition

Mallrats: Collector's Edition
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The DVD:

MOVIE:
Kevin Smith's "Mallrats" was definitely a bit of a sophmore curse: after his first successful outing with the low-budget "Clerks", he leaped to major studio Universal for this try for a teen pic that doesn't quite work, although there certainly are a couple of funny moments that highlight the picture.

The film stars Jason Lee and Jeremy London as two slackers who invade the local mall to get back the girlfriend of one of the characters, played by Claire Forlani("Meet Joe Black"). Lee is decent as the main character, but doesn't have quite as solid a performance as he did in "Chasing Amy"- but London does a completely bland and boring job in his role.

There's some very funny attempts to make a small, lean comedy by Smith, but there's also a lot of the film that feels as if it's been tampered with by studio ideas. It doesn't help that Lee and London aren't as entertaining a duo as Jeff Anderson and Brian O'Halloran in "Clerks". What Smith tries for here is mainly easy jokes and simple bits and it only sometimes works. Smith could easily have brought the sensibilities and humor of "Clerks" into "Mallrats", but unfortunately, what's ended up here is sort of a messy, sometimes funny film that only occasionally hits the mark. At one point, Smith ended up jokingly apologizing for "Mallrats" and it's not quite that bad and Smith ended up showing the work he could do again with "Chasing Amy".

VIDEO: A very good, but not quite perfect 1.85:1 anamorphic transfer that looks clear and clean, although occasionally the picture looks slightly soft. Other than that, though, when the picture looks strong I found it excellent- colors are very strong, and this is a picture that contains some vivid colors that show up quite well and black level is definitely strong. There's nothing in the way of artifacts such as pixelization or aliasing. Fleshtones are accurate throughout and detail is fairly nice, although not really that exceptional. Maybe it's my imagination, but a few shots look a tad dark as well, nothing major- just a little on the dim side. Again, Universal's only had a few bad discs and "Mallrats" although not quite a perfect transfer, is still quite good.

SOUND: "Mallrats" doesn't have a lot of action going on, but there's quite a few nice rock songs on the score to round out the sound stage. Dialogue is always clear and natural, but there's some lines that were changed awkwardly- look for details in the commentary. Overall though, it's a nice sound mix- clean, clear and well-recorded- especially the rock soundtrack.

MENUS: Some fairly nice animated menus that have either slight animation during the main menu, or scenes playing during one of the sub-menus and again, Universal adds their little odd logos during the menu to tell viewers what all the buttons do and even have a help menu to tell you what all the symbols mean. It's kinda goofy, but oh well. What really should definitely be changed on future Universal discs is to have the commentary be able to be turned on with the remote instead of having to go through what seems like 10 menu screens to change the audio from commentary to film- they've gone to not allowing the commentary be turned on from the remote on the last few discs and it's ANNOYING.

EXTRAS:
Commentary: A hilarious commentary(what else to expect from Kevin Smith, who's done wonderful commentaries for "Clerks" and "Chasing Amy) from director Kevin Smith, Ben Affleck, Jason Mewes, Scott Mosier and others. The group talks a lot about the differences between the original draft of the film and the film's final draft. The coolest technological feature of this commentary is that sometimes during the picture you can watch a video of the commentary being recorded. When the "angle" light pops up, you can watch Smith and crew talking abou the film. The only complaint that I have about this new technology is kinda minor: the picture of the crew talking is right smack in the middle of the screen- it would have been nice to have it been placed in the corner of the screen, but you can turn it off and on, so it's not a really big deal. Like the "Clerks" commentary, it's again the perfect View Askew commentary; a group of people having a lot of fun talking about their film, allowing themselves to make fun of it's flaws and it's a very funny talk, just as funny as the "Clerks" commentary, if not funnier. Both informative with some nifty production info and incredibly entertaining, this is a highly highly recommended commentary. Listen for a bit about a sequel for the film that was originally planned.

Documentary:A documentary with an odd little opening on how the views included don't represent the views of Universal that talks about the creation of "Mallrats" that includes interviews with Smith and the cast/crew of the film. There's a lot of talk about what the picture was supposed to be, or at leas the ideas that the studio had about what they wanted this picture to be versus what the picture finally ended up as. Like the "deleted scenes" documentary, this is a really well-done and informative documentary that provides more than just the usual slick interviews- this provides a strong point-of-view from Smith about how he saw this picture shaping up and where it may have went wrong dealing with the studio. The documentary's both funny and informative, just like the commentary and it's an interesting look at how a filmmaker who's only previous work was a low budget hit walked into his first major studio picture. The documentary runs for about 20 minutes.

Trailer: Of course, the trailer is included. Full frame, though. There's also a trailer for the soundtrack.

Music Video: The video for the Goops "Build Me Up, Buttercup" that includes some hilarious Jay and Silent Bob moments. It may be kind of hard to find the video at first- it's right after the trailer for the soundtrack under MCA Soundtrack presentations.

Photo Gallery: A pretty nice little photo gallery, full of actor photos as well as some from shooting.

Text Stuff: Production notes as well as cast bios.

Deleted Scenes Instead of providing simply a list of deleted scenes to choose from, Kevin Smith has put together sort of a documentary that he hosts with View Askew Historian Vincent Perera. The two of them talk about the differences in the film's final draft and why the changes came about. There is a deleted scene shown in screenplay form, but the biggest feature of the deleted scenes section is the film's odd original opening, which takes place at the Governor's ball. It's about 20 minutes in length and is far, far different from the original opening. The deleted scenes are in fine condition and the original opening, although it doesn't work, has a few funny moments. There are also a few scenes included that are actually in the film, but what's included here was the original dialogue for those scenes that refer back to the original opening. A lot of these scenes are original versions of scenes in the film, but still, a lot of the scenes are definitely interesting to watch, especially the original opening. Most hilarious is a set of the opening scenes with Jason Lee's voiceover that wasn't used. This is a really nicely done documentary with really informative discussion about the original parts of the film, but it would have been nice if Universal had taken this documentary and put chapters in it so viewers can skip to certain areas of the film. The documentary runs for 1 hour.

Easter Egg Definitely a funny little video bit from Smith if you click on the robot in the bonus menu.

GRADES:
The Film: 80/B- = (400/500 possible points)
Video: 89/B+ = (356/400 possible points)
Audio: 90/A- = (360/400 possible points)
Extras: 96/A = (288/300 possible points)
Menus: 90/A- = (180/200 possible points)
Value: 89/B+ = (267/300 possible points)
Presentation:91/A = (91/100 possible points)

Total Points:1942/2200
Overall Grade:88%/B
Final Thoughts: Not Smith's best film, but Universal has put together a very, very cool DVD. I'm very pleased to see that they let Smith put together a lot of the additional features himself. Both documentaries are great and beyond that, the commentary is excellent- very funny and interesting. If you're a fan of Smith's films this is definitely worth a purchase.

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DVD Information

Mallrats:Special Edition
Universal Home Video
1.85:1/ Dolby Digital 5.1& French 2.0
English Captions
Dual Layer:Yes
Rated:R
Anamorphic:Yes
Region:1