Quartile rating: 6.5/10 · 1 rating
Holden and Banky are comic book artists. Everything is going good for them until they meet Alyssa, also a comic book artist. Holden falls for her, but his hopes are crushed when he finds out she's a lesbian.
Chasing Amy is one of Kevin Smith's most ambitious films, tackling bisexuality, sexual identity, and male insecurity with unusual candor and wit for a mid-90s indie romcom. The screenplay is genuinely distinctive — raw, verbose, and emotionally honest in ways the genre rarely attempted. Joey Lauren Adams and Ben Affleck deliver uneven but often affecting performances, with the film's strength lying in its dialogue-driven emotional confrontations. Cinematography is workmanlike View Askewniverse stuff — functional but unremarkable. The ending, where Holden's clumsy threesome proposal implodes everything, is thematically coherent but emotionally unsatisfying and somewhat fumbled in execution, leaving characters worse off without quite earning the bittersweet note it reaches for. Novelty is high — no other film of its era handled these themes with this particular combination of stoner comedy, genuine heartache, and frank sexual politics.