Kevin Smith’s Next Film, The 4:30 Movie, Gets a Trailer

Movies

Kevin Smith is back, and he’s going back in time with his new film. Today, Smith released a trailer for The 4:30 Movie, a comedy about teens in the 80s falling in love and going to the movies. Written and directed by Smith, as usual, The 4:30 Movie stars Austin Zajur, Siena Agudong, Nicholas Cirillo, Reed Northrup, and a host of Smith’s regulars in small roles or cameos, including Brian O’Halloran, Jeff Anderson, Jason Lee, Rosario Dawson, Justin Long, Diedrich Bader, Genesis Rodriguez, Kate Micucci, and Smith’s daughter, Harley Quinn Smith – and those are just the ones I noticed in the trailer. The 4:30 Movie will arrive in theaters (where, unlike the protagonists of Smith’s film, you’re encouraged to pay for your ticket) on September 13, 2024. You can see the trailer below:

I’m a big fan of Kevin Smith’s, so I’m predisposed to liking his movies (not that I like all of them; the first two in that planned – and possibly abandoned – Canadian horror trilogy, Tusk and Yoga Hosers, were awful, and Cop Out was pretty bad, too), so I’ve been looking forward to this one since Smith announced it. I love the premise, the idea of going back to an era when the movie theater was something special, a place that held magic and discovery, where you never knew if you were about to discover the next classic. I don’t know if that changed in general, or if it’s just a byproduct of getting older – or the inundation of so many bad films – but the theater doesn’t have that same feel anymore. If I trust anyone to bring it back, even if it’s just for a moment, it’s Kevin Smith, because he felt the same way about movies, and he knows how to push the audience’s nostalgia buttons in a way unique to him. The trailer for The 4:30 Movie starts with the kids watching a trashy horror film about a murderous nun (played by Harley Quinn Smith, which is pretty funny), and that’s cool, but I hope he incorporates some real movies into the plot as well. This film takes place in 1986; Aliens, Top Gun, Big Trouble in Little China, Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, The Jewel of the Nile, and plenty of others were released that year. The immortal Rocky IV at least gets a mention, but I hope Smith really dives into the films of the era.

Another thing I love about Kevin Smith’s movies is how much they made me appreciate New Jersey in a way someone from New York typically doesn’t. It isn’t just Smith; I spent two weeks every summer as a kid on the Jersey Shore, so it’s a part of me. But to Smith, Jersey is alive in a way no other filmmaker presents it because it’s his home. The 4:30 Movie appears to be no exception, from the dock the main guy is sitting on to that beautiful establishing shot of the beach town. I believe this is Atlantic Highlands, where the scenes in the movie theater were filmed; if you aren’t aware, Smith bought the town’s old movie theater, which he renamed Smodcastle Cinemas. For The 4:30 Movie, he recreated the old theater, which was called Atlantic Cinemas. Regardless, it’s got the Jersey Shore feel (not the reality show, which was filmed at Seaside Heights; the real shore), and Smith appears to have peppered the movie with Jersey references, like having the main girl’s last name be “Barnegat,” the name of another Jersey Shore township, this one closer to where I used to vacation. It’s something people who’ve never been there may not catch, but it lends the film a loving authenticity that permeates all of Smith’s Jersey-set movies.

Putting on my objectivity cap, I’ll admit that parts of the trailer are a little corny, like when the girl tells the lead guy she’ll go out with him over the phone, and he asks her to hang on for a second so he can do a ridiculously ostentatious dance to demonstrate his joy. It’s one of those movie things that have been done a million times, and it always seems silly and never plays as well as the filmmakers who keep using it think it will. And while most of the funny lines made me laugh, a couple were a little clunky. Part of this may be Austin Zajur, who is my biggest worry about The 4:30 Movie. He was in Clerks III, and he was by far the worst part of the movie (which I mostly liked). It didn’t help that his character was extraneous to the plot and only took time away from the people we’d rather watch, but his performance didn’t help. My suspicion is that Smith is writing roles for Zajur because he’s dating Smith’s daughter, and I get it, but I don’t want him to sink otherwise good movies. And who knows, maybe he’ll be the next great Kevin Smith regular when he has something that makes good use of him. But I’m not impressed so far, and while he’s not keeping me away from The 4:30 Movie, he’s the factor I’m least sure of. Aside from that, I’m good to go on this one.