After hearing people say this was a return to form for Kevin Smith, I stupidly went into this one with an open mind. It didn't take long for that washed up hack to disappoint. It was like if they took Mallrats and removed anything that made it interesting, then coated the whole thing in a saccharine glaze. If that wasn't enough, the actors are just plain weird and the chemistry is all wrong--the opening thirty minutes is so homoerotic you get the feeling the leads are going to start buttfucking at any given moment. The dialogue starts off at hack level 3 and by the time you get to the 'Significant Moment' between Brian and the broad from the theater, it gets dialed up to 11: "Oh my god--you know XX? He's a director, in the movie Y." "Yes. Do you know movie Z?" "Yes I do know movie Z. Wow, I don't believe you know movie Z, you're so cool!" It's like some placeholder text he forgot to fucking replace. I mean can someone tell this vegan, longcoat-wearing dunce that GPT exists already? Or does the world beyond his gay podcast and faggoty ass reality TV shows not exist anymore? It doesn't--and that's been his problem for years. That's why there's no reality to any of this shit, and it all comes off as fake. I mean the dialogue is not witty or insightful, it's just empty; and as for the romance and friendship, they feel about as multidimensional as the guests at Kevin Mcallister's christmas parties. And all the while they're playing this godawful generic 80s music underneath too, and constantly reminding you it's the 80s. YES WE FUCKING GET IT, ITS THE FUCKING EIGHTIES. YOU DONT HAVE TO MENTION THE GOONIES OR POLTERGEIST IN EVERY SECOND BREATH. Like this is just beyond hack. Every single beginner's trap, this over the hill weed smoking doofus falls into. 30+ years of filmmaking experience and all he can do is go backwards. The worst part is when they keep doing that stupid joke that bad period movies always do, you know when they go 'Haha x will never happen?' like "They'll never make more star wars movies haha nudge nudge wink wink." Then the whole conceit they 'reveal' at the end is so obvious they may as well have just come out with it openly. It adds nothing to the movie, in fact it just detracts from it because you realize once again that this tool ran out of ideas in 1999. Fuck you Kevin Smith. If Clerks 3 was the nail in the coffin of his career, this dopey 80s bait simulacrum was the flag draped over it. The fat fuck shouldn't have survived his heart attack.