Force Fed Films: An Evening With Kevin Smith (2002)

“An Evening With Kevin Smith” is a very different movie than Jim usually tells me to watch. First of all, it isn’t from the 80’s and it isn’t a sci-fi movie. But all kidding aside, this is a different movie than I usually watch. There really isn’t a story, no real characters and it essentially is a stand up comedy routine. But it is Kevin Smith, and I find him really interesting to listen to, and I have liked the movies I’ve watched with him. So I went in this hoping to laugh my ass off, if anything else, I will be disappointed.

This movie is entirely shots of Kevin Smith answering questions that various college students from numerous colleges across the U.S asked him. Which is nice to see a raw and real version of Kevin.

I feel real bad watching this movie right now. I wish I saw “Dogma” and “Chasing Amy” before I saw this. And I also wished I had rewatched “Jay and Silent Bob Strikes Back” more recently. I say this because I think I missed a lot of jokes that I would of gotten after seeing those movies.

But nonetheless, he is still really funny. Its delightful to see him improvising jokes on the spot. Because some of these students that ask him questions are probably high. Surprised? Not really. But he’ll shoot jokes in between questions and even in his answers. So I was laughing fairly hard at a number of points throughout the movie.

Now I really don’t have any legitimate complaints, I just found this really long to watch alone. It is 233 minutes long, which is a lot of content. But sadly I don’t get all of the jokes, and I would of loved to enjoy some of these jokes with a friend. I know that sounds kind of depressing, but a lot of jokes would be nice to re-tell to a friend right beside you.

And there are times where he’ll be telling a story, such as when he first met his wife or when he was forced to make a documentary for Prince. A lot of this is all interesting, for a person who takes a big interest in his life. For a person like me who likes him more as a character (Silent Bob), all this feels a bit boring and stretches out a bit too long. Don’t get me wrong, there are punch lines which are funny, but cut the long story and just give me the short versions with all the punch lines.

Now a small thing I enjoy that wasn’t part of the movie exactly was the title menu on the DVD. So you pop this in, and the menu pops up. Both DVD’s have an unique loop of Kevin breaking the fourth wall, waiting for you to start the movie. There is also this quirky background music playing. All this is very amusing, and I wanted to watch all of the loop, see how he reacts. As time goes on, he gets even more angry at you for not starting the DVD. It’s just a small thing that I found rather amusing.

Overall, I enjoyed this a fair amount. I wish it was shorter, and I wish I could watch this after watching "Dogma” and “Chasing Amy” and probably with a Kevin Smith fan also. I am sure a lot of Kevin Smith fans will enjoy the hell out of this, I just found this more interesting than entertaining.