Dogma Review
by Jeremiah McVay (jeremcvay AT yahoo DOT com)November 25th, 1999
Director: Kevin Smith
Screenwriter: Kevin Smith
Country: Canada; Year: 1999
Rating (4 star system): **1/2
Hopefully, as Alan Rickman upholds in the movie, God does have a sense of humor... for Kevin Smith's sake. The
writer-director basically upholds the faith, but in a very unconventional way. Whether one could truly say his portrait of religion puts it in a good light or not is really a personal opinion, but it's clear he doesn't mind questioning his subject-- and what's wrong with that?
Smith makes films from the gut. He makes movies that he would like to see and that's clear. This has paid off for him thus far because he's pretty much an everyman and a lot of people want to see the same things on the screen that he does. He
definitely has a strong instinct for filmmaking, but I'd far from call it developed.
I found this movie to be quite entertaining, but I couldn't really say it was all that well made or even, for that matter, good. None of the peices seemed to quite fit together right. His direction lacks a lot, often giving in to cliche. I wouldn't even say it's the classic Hollywood style, exactly, but a self-conscious pop version, along the same lines as Tarantino. What lacks for Smith
is a definitive style to really set a tone and pace for his scenes and the movie as a whole. Whereas Tarantino and so many of pop-culturalist young directors rely on a melding of their writing and directing for a unique style, Smith's writing comes almost fully from his writing and it's as if the direction is merely an afterthought. This is not to say that he is not a competent director, but I'd venture to say he is not a confident one. I would love to see a Smith-written script directed by another director who
could show just how much potential is there. Then maybe smith himself would be able to find a way to mine his own material
for a little more depth.
Again, as was the case with many in his first films, the performances just aren't that great, and, in some cases, just downright bad. I love Chris Rock [as a comic], but he just is not a good actor. Salma Hayek was just a little better and Linda Fiorentino had her moments, but none of the performances were really anything to get excited about. Sure, they were able to
do well with some of the one-liners and other jokes, but that's hardly acting. I wasn't really even impressed at all with Alan Rickman, either. He just seemed too rehearsed. There was nothing at all fresh about his performance. The only characters that
really seemed to meet their full potential were the unlikely prophets- Jay and Silent Bob. Of course, their potential is to be entertaining slackers- not a particularly hard task, but Smith and Jason Mewes do it well. Damon and Affleck were decent
enough, but they didn't really seem to even be part of anything. For some odd reason, it seemed like they were in a separate
movie than the rest of the cast [I really have no explanation for why I thought this; I guess they were just out of place].
As I said before, Smith's style comes almost completely from his writing, which is steeped in pop-culture and slacker references. He really has a pretty good story here. The problem is that he seems unwilling to part with material. There were
jokes and gags that had no place in the film and only slowed or hindered it. Something else I noticed in the film is that Smith has
his characters explain too much. It seemed so unnatural every time I learned a new peice of backstory, etc. because it was explained to death by the characters-- something that was actually made into a joke itself in the film, but still would have been better rectified.
Kevin Smith knows entertainment, and I, for one, believe he also knows good storytelling through good filmmaking. I just
don't think he realized his full potential yet. I'll probably see his next film, and I expect it will be a step toward that.
--
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