Chasing Amy.

Is there anything in the world more benighted than the typical movie reviewer, who does not even rise to the grander incompetence of a Siskel or Ebert? The batrachian chorus is waxing rapturous over Chasing Amy, as it did, for instance, over Flirting with Disaster, a similar piece of attitudinizing per- siflage. There is a kind of loose-limbed devil-may-care youth movie (Fargo is a slightly more proficient example) that tickles equally laid-back juveniles and trendy codgers, as if flashy anomie were an earnest of quality.

I missed Kevin Smith's acclaimed low-budget debut film Clerks, as well as its critically cold-shouldered sequel Mallrats, but segment three, Chasing Amy, despite a certain brio and some funny lines, is not calculated to make me feel deprived. The basic absurdity here is that when Holden, the hero, falls in love (for no compelling reason) with Alyssa, a confirmed lesbian, this con- verts the young woman (for no compelling reason) to passionate heterosexuality. There are, of course, also a number of ancillary inanities. I suspect that what Smith calls, rather grandly, his New Jersey Trilogy is a case of the whole not exceeding the sum of its parts. To be sure, I have no objection to the writer - director's casting his girlfriend in the lead, except when she is as untalented, unattractive, and mealy-mouthed as Joey Lauren Adams, about whom the ear and the eye will have to fight it out as to which is more victimized. Her leading man, Ben Affleck, is considerably bet- ter, except in the car scene in which he pours out his feelings in unison with the pouring rain outside, a bravura passage aimed at the heart, but hitting a somewhat lower organ.

There is good work from Jason Lee, as Holden's fellow cartoonist on Bluntman Comics and woman-hungry roommate (who may be unconsciously chasing Holden), and from Dwight Ewell, in the unsubtle but amusing role of a black homosexual. Kevin Smith repeats his running-gag cameo role as Silent Bob, who is not all that silent, alas, and gets to utter the key speech about everyone's having an Amy, a woman one carelessly lost and is doomed to chase forever. Yet even that is not the film's most bathetic scene, one that I'll let you discover for yourself, if you are desperado enough to seek it out.

The ads for Chasing Amy show the heavily airbrushed face of Joey Lauren Adams with the caption, "It's not who you love. It's how." I would say, "It's not who you love, it's whom."