Chasing Amy (1997)
★★½ — Chasing Amy (1997)
There's a version of Chasing Amy that I think I'd genuinely love. A messy, honest story about desire, jealousy and the way our own insecurities can poison something good. The bones are there. Kevin Smith clearly cares about this one, and that passion comes through in flashes. But caring about something and pulling it off are two very different things, and somewhere between the two, Chasing Amy loses me.
I remember watching it younger and feeling like it had something to say. It felt raw, a bit rough around the edges in a way that seemed deliberate, like Smith was just letting his characters breathe and speak honestly. And fair enough, maybe at that age I was more willing to meet it halfway. Coming back to it now, though, a lot of that rawness just reads as messiness. The dialogue, which is supposed to feel naturalistic and sharp, too often lands as stilted and overwrought. Characters deliver these long, earnest speeches that no real person would ever actually say out loud, at least not without someone telling them to get to the point.
And the behaviour. God, the behaviour. People in this film make decisions that are baffling, not in an interesting, complicated, true-to-life way, but in a way that makes you feel like they're doing it because the script needs them to. There's a particular stretch in the third act where the lead makes a choice so odd, so weirdly conceived, that it doesn't just strain credulity, it snaps it entirely. I sat there thinking: nobody would actually do this. Nobody. And once you've lost that thread of believability, it's very hard to get it back.
Smith's heart is in the right place. I do believe that. He's trying to say something genuine about love and sexuality and the damage men can do when they let their ego run the relationship, and occasionally he lands it. There are scenes, usually the quieter ones, where the film finds a kind of emotional honesty that reminds you why people responded to it in the first place. But then someone opens their mouth again and delivers another speech that sounds like it was workshopped in a creative writing class, and the spell breaks.
It sits awkwardly in his filmography for me. I think Clerks (1994) gets away with the rough, talky style because it has a lo-fi charm that suits it perfectly, and Mallrats (1995) at least commits to being lightweight fun. Chasing Amy is reaching for something more emotionally substantial than either of those, which makes its shortcomings sting a bit more. When you're swinging for something real and miss, it's more noticeable than when you're just mucking about.
There's also a immaturity to the whole thing that I can't quite shake. Not immaturity in a charming or forgivable way, more in a way that suggests the film hasn't fully interrogated its own ideas. It raises questions it doesn't really want to answer, and tidies things up in ways that feel convenient rather than earned. For a film that positions itself as emotionally mature and willing to go to uncomfortable places, it's surprisingly reluctant to sit in the discomfort it creates.
Two and a half stars. Not a write-off, not a classic. A film with something buried inside it that never quite gets out. Worth a watch if you're doing a Kevin Smith run, but go in with your expectations adjusted.
Rating: ★★½ | Year: 1997 | Watched: 2025-04-27
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Related on Movies With Macca
More from Kevin Smith: Jay and Silent Bob Reboot (2019) · Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back (2001) · Mallrats (1995) · Clerks (1994)
More with Ben Affleck: Daredevil (2003) · Good Will Hunting (1997) · Gone Girl (2014) · Armageddon (1998)
More from the 1990s: Lessons of Darkness (1992) · Shinjuku Boys (1995) · Blue (1993) · Cemetery Man (1994)
More comedy: The Eagle (1925) · The General (1926) · Americana (2023) · The Naked Gun: From the Files of Police Squad! (1988)
More drama: Viy (1967) · Wonder (2017) · A Better Tomorrow (1986) · Beautiful Boy (2018)
