Mallrats is in my opinion, Kevin Smith’s most intelligent and hilarious film. The story takes place in New Jersey just like clerks. Mallrats is the story of two friends T.S. Quint (Jeremy London) and Brodie Bruce (Jason Lee), who are both dumped by their girlfriends on the same morning. While T.S. is completely crushed, Brodie is taking everything in stride. The two end up going to the mall – Brodie’s favorite hang out – and the story takes place, through the course of one day in the mall. Finding both their girlfriends there (played by Clair Forlani and Shannen Doherty), the two main characters experience a days worth of fun and excitement trying to win back the women they love.
Mallrats was Kevin Smith’s second film. For this film, he was given a six million dollar budget to work with. Although the film was supposed to take place in two malls in New Jersey, the film was actually shot in Eden Prairie, Minnesota (the mall I grew up going to) and Menlo Park, California. Much unlike clerks, Mallrats was a box office flop. Smith was disappointed that the film had flopped, but after looking at things in perspective he understood why. Smith contributes the failure of Mallrats to two things. First, the fact that it was the film that followed clerks, in his opinion, had Mallrats been the first the public had seen of Kevin Smith, it would have been a huge success. Second, Smith did not have anything personal to say in Mallrats. It was just a funny movie with a six-million-dollar budget.
