The 4:30 Movie (2024) review

Smith's supposedly "autobiographical" story about his teenage years growing up in Jersey has Brian David (Austin Zajur as his stand-in) hanging around with his friends Burny (Nicholas Cirillo) and Belly (Reed Northrup) while having a crush on diminutive Melody (Siena Agudong) and then clashing with the arrogant manager (Ken Jeong) of a local movie theatre (which so happens to be the SModcastle Cinemas in Atlantic Highlands that Kevin owns).  It's quite strange how the director, who's been making movies for three decades now, has somehow gotten considerably worse as time has gone on: he went from being semi-competent with Clerks back in 1994 and has regressed to the point where, if I didn't know he made this, I'd have thought it was something slapped together by a not-quite talented recent film school graduate.  The snappy one-liners he's known for are missing, the "acting" is over-embellished and he even "borrows" from Grindhouse by including fake trailers in order to pad the length.  I'm not sure why he doesn't get his daughter Harley and make a feature out of the nunsploitation-inspired Sister Sugar Walls ... it might be more fun than this, and hopefully there won't be any Star Wars trivia.