With "The 4:30 Movie," a lightly likable coming-of-age story and romantic-comedy, writer/director Kevin Smith ("Clerks III," "Jay and Silent Reboot") offers low-stakes nostalgia and very little else. Smith's recent projects play squarely to his established fans, so it stands to reason that there's a teasing joke about "Clerks IV" early on in this movie. "The 4:30 Movie" is very much for people who only want more of the same from Smith. In this case, that's a superficially personal, but mostly conventional teen comedy about a plucky young cinephile who woos his crush and also shares a moment with his two best friends.
Light and self-deprecating where "Clerks 3" was depressing and verklempt, "The 4:30 Movie" offers viewers a reassuring trip down memory lane. It's 1986, and Smith stand-in Brian David (Austin Zajur) and his friends are all abuzz about a triple-header at New Jersey's own Atlantic Cinemas, now the Smith-owned Smodcastle Cinemas in Atlantic Heights. They're going to sneak into an R-rated movie, an adaptation of the airport detective novel series "Bucklick," and Brian David wants to bring Melody (Siena Agudong), too.
The very idea of bringing a girl upsets the otherwise easygoing group dynamic between Brian David, loudmouth horndog Burny (Nicholas Cirillo), and harmless dork Belly (Reed Northrup). They goof around, talk about—and in one scene, hook up—with girls, and largely daydream about movies. That laidback setup is the conceptual equivalent of a layup for Smith, who's made a career out of stories about precocious slackers who prevail simply because they stand by each other and also really believe in themselves.
A good part of "The 4:30 Movie"'s charm comes from its intimate scale. Like most of Smith's recent movies, this one looks like it was made by an assortment of his best friends and favorite relatives, including his daughter Harley Quinn Smith, and a Rolodex of celebrity cameos from Smith regulars like Rosario Dawson and Justin Long. The main cast of teenage characters also have a sweet, if somewhat forced chemistry that makes up for a lot of mediocre jokes that may still land with Smith's loyal viewers.
All of this, including the ultimate fate of Atlantic Cinemas, might surprise Brian David and his friends, who speak to each other with the unearned confidence of young people who have it all figured out. So not much has changed for Smith, whose comedies tend to reward jaded film lovers for recognizing how small the distant past now seems from the eternal present. Because we know how well the Mets did in their 1986 season, just like we know how good Brian David's taste is when he bops along to Chaka Khan with his buddies or why he gawps at the (fake) trailers that play before their first movie, including an ad for a lovably sleazy thriller called "Sister Sugar Walls," about a killer nun (Harley Quinn Smith) who moonlights as a prostitute. They don't make ‘em like that anymore, even if they absolutely do.
There's never really a doubt as to how Brian David's story will go and some of the seemingly "personal" details of his early courtship with Melody aren't as charming as Zajur and Agudong are together. Likewise, Smith goes a little too easy on his carbon-dated protagonists, not to mention the squirrelly, but never-that-funny Mike, Ken Jeong's antagonistic movie theater manager. It probably says something that the funniest people in "The 4:30 Movie" are older male dropouts who either aren't aware of or simply don't care about whatever Brian's up to. They talk about "Rocky IV" and pro-wrestling and then disappear into the chintzy haze of Smith's snow globe memories.
The most embarrassing interactions in Smith's new movie predictably involve women, whose stock characters are only appealing when performed by experienced and/or gifted comediennes. Smith attracts a couple here, but they can only do so much with such rubbery material. Smith's jokes also tend to be overshadowed by painfully earnest and sometimes unbelievable interactions between his stand-in Brian David and a couple of intimidatingly smart and unfailingly ingratiating women, particularly Genesis Rodriguez's John-Boorman-loving usherette and Melody, too.
It's hard to fully embrace yet another Kevin Smith comedy where the cocky under-achiever gets permission to grow at some future date, including a pandering apology for Brian David's klutziness with women ("The only place you can look short is how little you know about girls"). Still, you'll ultimately either forgive or reject "The 4:30 Movie" based on how much you want to root for its younger cast members. Their earnest attempts at selling Smith's hand-me-downs often outdistance whatever tired lines they're handed ("You think today could ever be a movie?"). "The 4:30 Movie" isn't exactly bad, it just requires a little more patience than you might be willing to commit to such a slight throwback.
