Did I Really Need to Own a Limited Edition 4K Ultra HD Copy of Mallrats (1995)?

Reader, how often do you make a purchase and immediately question the act before you’ve even sealed the deal? The kind of product that makes you rethink your financial priorities as well as your home’s interior aesthetics? The kind of decision that makes you say “I’m fixin’ to do something dumber than hell, but I’m going anyways” like Llewelyn Moss in No Country For Old Men?

I had such a moment last month when, after deliberating longer than anyone should, I finally pulled the trigger on Arrow Video’s two-disc limited edition 4K ultra HD release of Mallrats.¹ Did I do “the smart thing” and wait until it was marked down $10 during a mid-year sale? Indeed.² Did I still question the practicality of this purchase right up to and even after I took my digital shopping cart through the checkout line? …Yes.

I have long been a vocal supporter of physical media, ever since I was buying up collector’s edition DVDs in high school and cashing in on cheap VHS tapes when I worked at Movie Gallery during college. And like any good tapehead or dischound, my stash contains multitudes. Do I have a small bookshelf with sliding glass doors dedicated solely to boutique Blu-rays from the Criterion Collection, Vinegar Syndrome, Oscilloscope, Arrow, Shout! Factory, and Kino Lorber? Indeed. Do I also have a shelf hidden in a closet where I’ve stacked old videos three rows high and also a cardboard box full of tapes stashed away at my mother’s house? …Yes.³

There’s also a not insignificant number of “blind buys” in my collection—films that I purchased during a sale that I feel confident I will enjoy for one reason or another despite not actually having seen them before. It’s a stack that I chip away at from time to time when the vibe is right, even though it often takes months, even years, for me to crack open those cases.⁴ I know that many of you do this too. I am not a crackpot.

And I am not alone in having such a dichotomy of quality to my movie collection. But Mallrats is one of the few titles that manages to exist simultaneously in both worlds.

Mallrats wasn’t just my introduction to Kevin Smith. It was one of the first R-rated comedies that I ever saw. Which means it was basically my favorite movie when I was 14 years old. I didn’t catch up to it until around 2000, after it had already begun to develop a cult following upon bombing at the box office, and I instantly began wearing out my VHS copy.

Truly, how could a turn-of-the-century teenage boy not love Mallrats? It was kinda made for us after all. Jason Lee is so pitch perfect as iconic slacker hero Brodie that he was a comedy legend in my eyes. Jay and Silent Bob (played by Jason Mewes and Smith himself) are consistent comic relief and also the sort of dependable supporting characters that I wished I knew in real life. And even though her character Rene has subterranean standards when it comes to the men she dates, I thought Shannen Doherty was one of the most beautiful people I’d ever seen.⁵ (May she rest in peace.)

Despite watching Mallrats often in high school, and maybe even once or twice in college, I left it behind after a while. It’s not that I lost my affinity for the film as I grew into my 20s and 30s, it just felt like a pop culture time capsule that I’d buried years ago. One that I didn’t need to open yet.

The siren’s song called to me when Arrow announced a 4K restoration of the film, one that would include not just the standard special features like commentaries and documentary featurettes but a director’s cut of the film with 30 extra minutes. I knew it was against my better judgement, but I knew I had to have it.

When my copy arrived in the mail, my curiosity about the director’s cut got the best of me. But I decided to start with the featured introduction by Smith and his producing partner Scott Mosier, which turned out to be a clip from 2005. It was as if Smith had seen the future and understood my faux dilemma. He speaks from the heart about how thankful he is that Mallrats got a collector’s edition DVD before emphasizing just how pointless and even unwatchable the extended cut is, the version of the film that he actually hated before his editor saved it and made it work. He even points out that this centerpiece of the DVD upgrade features is a blatant cash grab, the sort of joke cloak that allows him to tell the truth while making fun of everyone involved (especially himself).

If Smith had actually intended to dissuade viewers from watching the director’s cut, it worked. I swapped discs and queued up the theatrical cut instead—which features an introduction from present-day Kevin. This one is no less honest but much more sincere, an appreciation letter to the people who rescued his sophomore feature from critical and financial failure and allowed it to become quite possibly his most beloved film.

Something about that introduction set my mind at ease. I’d been part of that cultural reappraisal of Mallrats in its first decade on home video. Now I’d get to celebrate its 30-year victory lap by watching it for the first time since adolescence. And Smith is right: It holds up better than you might think.

Was the 4K transfer of a film I’d only ever seen on a grainy VHS tape illuminating in any way? Maybe not. For a film that never really relied on its cinematography, though, it looks pretty great. And more importantly, this Arrow edition is going to look great sitting on my shelf between Hold Back the Dawn and Man of a Thousand Faces.⁶

Mallrats is now streaming on the Criterion Channel, and it’s available to rent elsewhere.

1. This is not sponsored content, but if anyone at Arrow Video would like to provide me with free 4K discs in exchange for newsletter coverage, I am open for business and easily bought.

2. Since I was already paying Arrow $5 for shipping, I went ahead and threw in a copy of their now-sold-out release of Jim Jarmusch’s The Limits of Control—a film I have not seen—for only $8. And still I ask: Does that make this better or worse?

3. I’ll have you know that many of those VHS tapes are unopened! They might be worth tens of dollars these days.

4. The last blind buy I watched was a TV movie from 1978 called Are You in the House Alone? that’s part of Vinegar Syndrome’s now-sold-out Televised Terror: Volume One box set. I’ve become fascinated with old TV movies in recent years, and having now watched two of the three films in this set, I’m very happy with my purchase. (This one features a young Dennis Quaid and a Charles Bernstein score!)

5. Here’s a fun fact about me: The only issue of Playboy that I ever bought was the one from the early aughts with Doherty on the cover. Condolences to my mother, who reads this newsletter.

6. I have not yet watched either of these films. But come on, they were $5 each for a nice Blu-ray. How can I say no to a Lon Chaney biopic?