An Evening with Kevin Smith (2002) – DVD
***/**** Image A Sound B+
directed by J.M. Kenny
by Bill Chambers Love him or hate him, there are simply no two ways around the fact that An Evening with Kevin Smith is one of the most entertaining standup films, if it can indeed be called that, since the heyday of Richard Pryor. Well-shot footage–compiled by J.M. Kenny, showing better comic instincts than he did as producer of the Nancy Pimental mockumentary on The Sweetest Thing‘s DVD(s)–from Q&As in which the entrepreneurial Smith participated at various college campuses across the United States, this 225-minute presentation opens and closes with Smith discussing his on-screen alter ego Silent Bob, the rare idiot icon made famous by the performer rather than the other way around. (It’s why equating himself with such residents of the catchphrase graveyard as Pauly Shore is his least successful routine in An Evening with Kevin Smith–Silent Bob doesn’t epitomize Smith’s popularity.) Moreover, Smith is anything but bashful; you’ll only wish he was speechless as he describes open-sore intercourse with his wife-to-be.