Mallrats, the story of two friends who coincidentally both lose their girlfriends retreat to their local mall to work out their love lives and get back together with their girlfriends. This had the potential to be Kevin Smith's best work in my opinion, but many factors held him back. First of all the main goal of Universal was for this film was to be a hard R film with a teen audience in mind. They were calling it a "Smart Porkys", because it had that snappy humor, but it had tits in it to attract teenage males. Director/Writer Kevin Smith and Producer Scott Mosier wanted to make a studio film in hopes of making lots of money to fund more independent films. Neither goal was really met, this film tanked at the box-office. It grossed only 3 million in total; meaning this film lost money with a total cost of 6 million. This film had high hopes, all tests were good, but why was it such a dud? Well I blame it on several factors, First of all Jim Jacks; the executive producer ruined this film. Kevin Smith may not be the greatest director, but he is a great writer, the two set each other off making Kevin a solid filmmaker, but Jim Jacks was always holding him back by forcing Kevin to cut down on the vulgar dialog as well as graphic scenes. One scene was known as the "cum in the hair" joke that was later made famous in 'There's Something About Mary', but many people at universal including Jim Jacks were holding Kevin back from making the movie he wanted. If you know Kevin's work, you will notice this is his only film where the word "cock" is never used. It's just tossed around in "Clerks' and common in his 3 other films. It's that raw, real humor and language that many fans like about his writing. Jim Jacks stressed that "Potty Mouth" (yes those were his words) be cut down. Even though there is nudity, and they want that R rating, they still had to cut back on the f***s and other rude language, but that's not what really held this film back. Gramercy Pictures, who were in charge of promoting this film, really did a poor job on making this movie known. They used the tag line "Starring Shannon Doherty and Jason Lee, someone you hate, and someone you've never even heard of." That really doesn't help promote the film in anyway. Then they asked Kevin and Scott to think of a good poster, now Kevin and Scott didn't think of "hey what would make people want to check out our movie?" they wanted "what would look cool on my wall?" The comic book cover poster is cool, but doesn't say much for the film, and it was the only poster made for the film. Some idiots were thrown off by it. Oh well. Also, the casting for this film was just okay, I was happy with Jason Lee as Brodie, perfect job on that, but Jeremy London as T.S.? Jeremy London is not that good of an actor, and just doesn't seem right for the part. Then Claire Forlani as Brandy was okay, but I could hear that British accent coming out at times. And then Shannon Doherty as Rene, first of all she really didn't seem thrilled to be in this movie, she never hung around the set, she would take off when she was done working. Plus lots of people (the public) didn't like her at the time; she had a reputation as a wild one. I think Kevin should have gone with his instinct and used Joey Lauren Adams. I think she would have been perfect for that part. They just barely got Jason Mewes to play Jay. Universal didn't want jay to play jay, they wanted Seth Green or Breckin Meyer, but even they realized that Jay should be Jay, Jay is based on the way Jason Mewes really is. I do think that Affleck was good as an asshole, but he probably could have played T.S. better than London. Renee Humphrey as Trish was good, they almost cast Jennifer Love Hewitt instead, but she seems too cute and innocent to play that part. Kevin Smith claims he could have made this film (probably better) with less money. I mean look at how good 'Chasing Amy' is with a quarter million dollar budget. Smith said that six million was just too much. He hates losing money for people, if this movie was done with just a million dollars, it would have been just as good. I agree. Also, (now this is where I get a bit picky) the original opening of this film was cut, and for good reason, it sucked, it was not funny at all, nor was it even somewhat realistic. If you watch closely, some dialog in this film is dubbed over and doesn't match the actor's mouth. This is because almost all references to that cut opening had to be cut, but it was too late to reshoot and in some instances, not possible to cut out of a scene. This film was not a total disaster. I believe it did pay for itself and probably profit when you include video rental where it was more popular than in theaters. Now when you take all of this into consideration, you see how great this film could have been. Despite all of its flaws, Mallrats is still one of my favorite films, and definitely my favorite comedy. I suggest you check it out if you liked Kevin's other work or even if you haven't, this one is probably the one that is most unlike his others. I still give it a 10/10, but it could have been an 11.<br /><br />P.S. Check out the commentary on the DVD if you know about Kevin Smith and View Askew well, it's very funny to an askewniverse fan.<br /><br />