Writer-director Kevin Smith burst onto the scene with 1994’s black-and-white comedy Clerks, a landmark in American independent filmmaking which chronicled the lives of a couple disgruntled New Jersey convenience store employees and the loafers who loitered outside their place of business. For a decade-plus, Smith then mined this particular seam, most often delivering different iterations on loquacious, entertainingly profane characters suffering through various stages of arrested development.
The rest of his career has seen Smith dabble in both horror and (of course) comic books, which were another pillar of his movie-obsessed youth. But Smith, for all his gifts with wildly irreverent and often smutty humor, has always had another side, too: his movies tend to have considerable heart, and deep streaks of sentimentality. Telling one of his most personal stories ever, the coming-of-age tale The 4:30 Movie indulges this hearty earnestness, in a lighthearted and pleasing enough way that longtime fans will most likely appreciate.
Set over the course of one afternoon in the summer of 1986, Smith’s movie unfolds in a small town in northern New Jersey. Teenager Brian David (Austin Zajur), having blown his chance the previous year with crush Melody Barnegat (Siena Agudong), calls her up on the phone and sweet-talks Melody into meeting him at the movies. They make plans for a mid-afternoon matinee (later adjusted to an early-evening show), and to kill time until then, Brian decides to while away the day with two friends, Belly (Reed Northrup) and the more extroverted Burny (Nicholas Cirillo), buying one ticket apiece and then theater-hopping into other films. Standing in their way is a self-important theater manager, Mike (Ken Jeong), who takes his job very seriously.

A simple story, right? It is, and at only 88 minutes (inclusive of end credits followed by two-and-a-half minutes of bloopers), The 4:30 Movie certainly isn’t trying to reinvent the wheel, narratively speaking. Driven by its back-and-forth banter, this is a film whose success is predicated almost entirely on some loose sense of viewer identification, and while its cast may not be the most experienced or professionally polished, they all manage to tap into the loose-limbed, slightly manic, and distinctly masculine energy that Smith is attempting to conjure and pay wistful homage to with his movie.
Is that a fancy way of saying that this is a teenage, dude-bro flick? Yeah, I suppose so. But Melody is written with an honesty and integrity that rightfully acknowledges adolescent girls tend to mature a bit more quickly than their male counterparts (it’s no surprise that she’s basically the most grounded character), so female viewers won’t feel pandered to.
Otherwise, rapid-fire comedic riffs abound, on everything from not retroactively putting the numeral “one” after a movie when it subsequently has a sequel (“It’s just Jaws, Belly, not Jaws One!”) to “movie bacon” and the silly notion of Star Wars prequels. Given the setting and story, there are also amusing trailers for movies-within-the-movie, from slasher films “banned in 12 countries” to a movie about a vengeful nun moonlighting as a hooker.

Like many of Smith’s efforts (especially the early ones), The 4:30 Movie isn’t a film that connects predominantly because of its stunning production value. It doesn’t look necessarily cheap, per se, but one can definitely tell it’s low-budget, and the visual aesthetic of the movie isn’t particularly ambitious. Instead, Smith just leans into the argumentative dialogue between these friends (always his strength), and lets that carry a viewer along. Quick cameos from friends and past Smith collaborators like Rosario Dawson, Jason Biggs, Justin Long, Jason Lee, Jason Mewes, Adam Pally, Diedrich Bader, Rachel Dratch, and Sam Richardson help round things out.
Presented in a standard Blu-ray case, The 4:30 Movie comes to home video presented in 1.85:1 widescreen. A motion-based menu gives way to playback with 12 optional chapter stops, and the Dolby Atmos sound mix is more than ample to handle the straightforward aural demands of the film.
 
In addition to the obligatory trailer, bonus features consist of a feature-length audio commentary track with Smith, and a 23-minute making-of featurette anchored by interviews with Smith, Jeong and the rest of the movie’s young stars.
Fans of sheer quantity over quality may be left wanting more, but honestly, the replay and entertainment value here is actually quite solid — Smith, as anyone who has ever seen him interviewed, is a natural-born talker, and in the commentary track rich anecdotes and self-effacing stories spill out of him with such unassuming ease that even after you’ve watched The 4:30 Movie once, giving it another spin just to hear his thoughts and perspective on things is more good-natured romp than chore. It feels just like watching a film with an old friend.

The behind-the-scenes featurette is quite entertaining as well, as Smith explains the specific narrative elements that are based on his own teenage experience, and how he didn’t want to make a movie called Ushers, since he never actually worked at a movie theater growing up.
He talks about being inspired by the “theme weeks” of movies he would watch on TV as an adolescent, and describes the film as “a tip of the backward cap, if you will, to the kid who got me where I am.” Zajur, Cirillo, Northrup and Agudong have warm words on their experience working with Smith, and Jeong talks about finding inspiration for his character in the detention teacher from John Hughes’s The Breakfast Club.
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Our Rating

Summary
The 4:30 Movie is a diverting slice of coming-of-age entertainment that taps into the deep reservoir of feeling many still have for a time before they were gripped by more of life’s responsibilities. Its energy probably skews a bit male, but it will put a smile on the face of all folks for whom movies have ever had a value beyond mere escape.