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Chasing Amy Review by Harry As huge a fan as I am of Kevin Smith and Jason Lee (as an actor, the a writer), I rented Chasing Amy from my local blockbuster with incredibly high hopes. After watching this film, I’m torn, yet I do feel the sudden urge to go out and commit a hate crime. There’s only one way to describe this movie. It’s an emotional whore. Like a prostitute wailing about her diseases, you might feel worse for her if she wasn’t a prostitute, but it’s hard to do when you find her lifestyle to be hideously immoral. That was this movie. Emotional, but distant because of the unclean vibe that just flowed from it. Trouble is, that’s also what this movie was about. A guy and a girl that really can’t seem to make their relationship work because she’s such a slut. The movie stars Ben Affleck as Holden McNeil, an aspiring comic book artist with a successful book about two weed-smoking superheroes who are a lot like their friends Jay and Silent Bob. Jason Lee plays his roommate/best friend/business associate. Holden meets a girl he really likes named Alyssa, and he thinks they’re going to get together, until she discovers she’s a lesbian. Give up, I say. He takes off, but she finds him and they start hanging out together and developing a friendship, all the while Jason Lee cracks more homophobic and politically incorrect statements than possible. Normally, Holden would go along with it, but Alyssa has turned him into one of those gay-lifestyle embracing droids, and Jason Lee isn’t pleased with it. Ben Affleck and Jason Lee have a falling out, and their friendship is on the rocks. Meanwhile, Ben Affleck tells the lesbian he loves her, and suddenly they get together, he being her first heterosexual relationship. Then, it turns out this isn’t true either, as she’s been with numerous men at a time. Ben Affleck is shocked and disgusted and doesn’t want to be with her anymore, (but as it turns out, it’s not her fault for lying and sleeping around, it’s his fault for feeling inadequate that he never sinned against his own body. So he tries to solve both problems at once. I won’t give away how, it’s actually a pretty interesting idea, but when he points out to Jason lee the reason he [Jason Lee] doesn’t like his relationship with the ex-lesbian and is so homophobic is because he’s in love with Ben Affleck. That’s the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard. The movie ends on a fairly sad yet hopeful (yet hopeless) note. While I still respect Kevin Smith’s ability as a writer/director, this movie just didn’t sit well with me because I found the glorification of certain things to be a little too much. The humor wasn’t there like other Kevin Smith movie, but as a romantic comedy goes, this is so far outside the mold that it gets a recommendation from me in that specific genre. Mallrats will always be the standard. Expect reviews of Clerks and Dogma once I get around to watching them all the way through.
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