Mallrats

Three and a half stars. Pretty good.

Juvenile, in places very shakily acted, but really quite funny. Jason Lee's uptight Brodie gets tiresome after a while, but he ends up sympathetic enough (especially in his support of TS's romance) to be worth rooting for at the end. I didn't know much about this film going into it, apart from the fact that it's Kevin Smith's poorly received follow-up to Clerks, which I also haven't seen yet. I hadn't expected it to be a romance, and I was pleasantly surprised to see that there are two love stories at the heart of all the comedy. Note that it's not a "romantic comedy" in the chick-flick sense; it's a geek comedy filled with with Star Wars and comic book references, that also happens to feature some very touching romance. Nice.