The third installment, after Clerks and Mallrats, in the "New Jersey Trilogy" of Kevin Smith, and easily the most ambitious and daring of the three. This is especially measurable in Smith's efforts to broaden his range into areas of the sincere, the sentimental, the downright sappy -- suspiciously similar to the inner yearnings of his hero, the underground comic-book author who dreams of doing something more "personal" than the continuing adventures of Bluntman and Chronic, superhero sidekicks. (To one avid reader, "They're like Bill and Ted meet Cheech and Chong.") The rigid definition of "personal," as divulged in the movie's bittersweet epilogue, turns out to stipulate straight autobiography, with unaltered names and faces. We are thereupon free to wonder how straightly autobiographical Chasing Amy may be. The situation begins with boy-meets-girl simplicity. Boy likes girl. Girl likes boy. But girl doesn't like boy like that. Girl likes girls. From this first complication, the plot moves forward with unusual stamina into new, if not always unexpected, developments and revelations. And the characters' readiness to grapple with these on the verbal battlefield transforms the proceedings into a serious dialogue on subjects of serious concern. (And not just a dialogue: it has the flavor variously of interior debate, public forum, secret confession.) So the movie has tireless movement forward, and it has commensurate movement downward, digging into its encountered issues in a therapeutically "open" and "sharing" way, while never sacrificing, let it be said, the trademark Smithian scurrility. The filmmaker is not so daring as to abandon the dirty talk that got him this far. Ben Affleck, Joey Lauren Adams, Jason Lee. (1997) — Duncan Shepherd
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