#chasing amy

Alive - Joey Lauren Adams

Propaganda:

This movie might be dated, but it does ring true sometimes

Movie #27 of 2026:

Chasing Amy (1997)

There’s a central tension in Kevin Smith’s third film, especially considered critically several decades on, which I think boils down to how much the audience is supposed to identify / agree with its main character. This is, after all, the tale of a man who confesses his love to a self-professed lesbian, is rewarded with her agreeing to date him anyway, and then prudishly pushes her away after learning more about her sexual history (namely that she’d had other male partners before him, including two high school classmates at the same time). That has the makings of a good drama, and it’s certainly a universal experience to fall for a person who seems unattainable, but it feels significantly cheaper if we assume we’re meant to take his side over it all.

The cultural conversation around sex and sexuality has continued to evolve since 1997, and there’s a general recognition of the fluidity of such labels now that didn’t exist back then — or at least, not to the extent that a random twenty-something dude from New Jersey could have been its best messenger. There are plenty of real people like Alyssa who prefer one gender but not exclusively, and/or whose understandings of their preferences change naturally over time. It shouldn’t be juicy or scandalous that she winds up reciprocating Holden’s feelings, nor should it be a moment of triumph for him that he’s able to win someone from the so-called ‘other team.’

But that’s more or less how it plays out here, unfortunately, and it’s particularly hard not to see our everyman protagonist as an intended audience-identification figure when Smith appears in his Silent Bob guise to literally tell him he reminds him of himself. Returning viewers will likely remember how the hero in Clerks had hangups about his girlfriend’s past experiences as well, which really makes the whole thing feel distinctly autobiographical. Alyssa is more of an object for Holden to obsess about than a character with her own interiority and personal arc, and neither she nor anyone else dares mention the word bisexual. Nor is there any consideration through a trans lens of decoupling genitalia from presentation or attraction, despite all the discussion of intercourse mechanics 101.

The one saving grace here — besides reminding ourselves that this was the 90s, and refreshing for the era in even broaching queer themes at all — is that the guy doesn’t get the girl in the end. While it may strain credulity for him to land her in the first place, she does call him out for his entitled attitude (and his ludicrous suggestion that they have a threesome with his friend he diagnoses as having a closeted crush on him), and his ultimate happy ending is limited to the fact that he’s able to turn the events into an independent comic book. If Holden is Smith and by extension somebody we’re all supposed to see ourselves in, at least his opinions are challenged by the text, rather than uncritically reified.

But I can’t help feeling that a stronger story would have centered its leading lady more throughout. It also could have eased up on the edgy sophomoric humor about bestiality and child molestation and the like, although Jason Lee’s sardonic slacker sidekick is at least more tolerable than his previous role in Mallrats or Randal in Clerks, who feel like minor variations of a common type. The writer-director’s gift for snappy dialogue and nerdish pop-culture observations is likewise honed to perfection here — the first time I’ve felt like the cast could uniformly handle one of his scripts — and he wisely limits the always-outrageous Jay and Silent Bob to a single scene that’s overall pretty effective. These are the sorts of elements that I wish could have been built into a better version of this movie, instead of the problematic one that actually exists for us today.

[Content warning for gun violence, racism, and homophobia including slurs.]

★★★☆☆

(I couldn't find a gif for The Spitfire Grill, but it would be here, too...if one existed.)