Chasing Amy **** (1997, Ben Affleck, Joey Lauren Adams, Jason Lee, Ethan Suplee) – Classic Movie Review 1740

This delicious, offbeat 1997 sex comedy from writer-director Kevin Smith, director of Clerks (1994) and Mallrats (1995), is a hilarious and truthful heartbreaker that confirms the strength and vitality of the American independent movie of the Nineties.

Two New Jersey designer friends Holden and Banky (Ben Affleck, Jason Lee) create a comic book called Bluntman and Chronic together, but find their happy relationship sorely tested when a lesbian rival cartoonist called Alyssa Jones (Lauren Adams) with a promiscuous heterosexual past comes between them. Affleck (just 25) as Holden meets and falls for Alyssa, who’s into him but she now primarily dates women.

Smith takes as his theme ‘it’s not who you love, it’s how you love’ in his ingratiating, cool and hip film that inhabits the Nineties world of muddled courtship rituals and up-front sexual politics, and examines how irrational human obsessions and self-doubts drive a wedge between people and those they love. Smith captures the atmosphere of ordinary life with likeable characters and sassy dialogue oozing with an honest, lacerating wit.

The laid-back performances are appealing (with Smith and Jason Mewes amusingly back as Silent Bob and Jay from Clerks and Mallrats) and Smith as writer consistently scores bull’s-eyes on his chosen targets. Chase it!

Blink and you’ll miss Affleck’s pal, Matt Damon, as Executive number 2 Shawn Oran, with Brian O’Halloran from Clerks as Executive number 1 Jim Hicks. Matt and Ben teamed up again with Lee for Smith’s Dogma (1999). Affleck’s younger brother Casey also appears as Little Kid.

Ben Affleck tells what it was like to kiss Jason Lee in the film. ‘I’m not homophobic,’ he says. ‘I just… I guess I am more than I thought, in that, it was just difficult for me you know? And I didn’t think it would be. I really backed down from it in a way. I really could have done more of a committed job. I just blew it… It was not my proudest moment.’  To add more challenges to filming, Ben also had to shoot love scenes with Adams, who was Smith’s then girlfriend.

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© Derek Winnert 2014 Classic Movie Review 1740

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