The Onion AV Club has a feature "The New Cult Canon" (which is about what you'd think) and Scott Tobias' entry on Kevin Smith's Clerks (IMDB Wiki) is about as scathing a summary of why Kevin Smith sucks as it should be. I remember hearing the buzz and then seeing the movie and wondering 'why is this any good?' The acting is atrocious and the dialogue was depraved. The rumor that it almost got an X-rating for language has an empirical basis. Tobias is also correct about the well-known Death Star scene, whose decent dialogue was ruined by the painfully bad acting:
O'Halloran and Anderson aren't skilled enough as actors to serve as more than mouthpieces for Smith's lowbrow gags and bits of philosophy, and they often choke on his reams of dialogue. (Smith has always been praised for his tart screenplays, but to me, he's a writer much too in love with his own voice; his films are littered with scenes that are allowed to drag on several beats longer than they should.)... That said, even Anderson can't trample over this fine monologue about the destruction of the Death Star in Return Of The Jedi:
It's (unwittingly?) ironic that Smith talks about Lucas because both of them share the same directorial trait: that while they may know where to place a camera directing is also how to get the actors to do what is necessary to be good actors. And while I can't necessarily argue about their camera skills, neither Smith or Lucas's actors come off as convincing. How else could Natalie Portman be horrible for Lucas yet in the same year be nominated for an Oscar in another film?
Backpost; put up 11-10-2009. Pic from here.
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