‘Chasing Chasing Amy’ Review: How Much Did Your Favorite Movie Impact You? [Tribeca]
Chasing Chasing Amy. Courtesy of Tribeca Film Festival.
Almost everyone has a favorite movie. It may be the movie you consider to be the best you’ve seen or one that, when you put it on, will always cheer you up. For me, that movie is Cars, the film that sparked my passion for film and crafted me into the person I am today. It’s the first film I remember watching and one that I’ll never skip when it’s playing. For Sav Rodgers, the director of Chasing Chasing Amy, that movie is Chasing Amy, Kevin Smith’s third feature — the third movie in his New Jersey trilogy — one that was hailed “problematic,” receiving mixed reactions from many, but for Rodgers, it “Literally saved [his] life.”
Chasing Chasing Amy. Courtesy of Tribeca Film Festival.
Chasing Amy, released in 1997, found Ben Affleck as Holden, a comic-book writer, who meets Alyssa (Joey Lauren Adams), the comic-book artist whom he falls in love with, only to find out that she’s gay. Rodgers, multi-hyphenating on the film, watched Chasing Amy for the first time at age 12, developing a (not-so) healthy obsession with the film, going so far as to “Watch it at least once a day, every day, for 30 days.” It’s this spark and passion that pushed Rodgers to create Chasing Chasing Amy, a documentary that he announced at a TedTalk in 2018, one that, through interviews with the filmmakers and people attached to the project, hopes to unpack the film’s legacy while telling his own story. It’s this journey of not so much self-discovery but self-understanding for Rodgers that maintains the emotional core of the film, reflecting for representation, even at the smallest level, can allow someone to feel recognized and seen, feeling comfortable to express who they are.
One of the things that Chasing Chasing Amy does so strongly is the way it approaches the reevaluation of Chasing Amy, doing so through commentary and discussion with festival programmers, audience members, filmmakers, and writers/critics. It pulls a clip from Roger Ebert’s review of the film, in which he says, “[Chasing Amy] develops into a film of touching insights.” It couples this with a sequence of interview clips, including one where someone says, (and I’m paraphrasing) “It may be wishful thinking to say that the reception would’ve been better had this come out now.”
Chasing Chasing Amy. Courtesy of Tribeca Film Festival.
The film slightly loses its grasp on the story when it intercuts between the Chasing Amy story and Sav’s relationship with his partner Riley, as the latter, while ultimately necessary, derails the film until we get a stronger grasp on the documentary’s bigger picture. Though Chasing Chasing Amy, on paper, is a love letter to Chasing Amy, it’s ultimately combatting the film’s initial reception, aiming to shine a new light on the film as a whole while diving into what brought up the controversial label in the first place. What’s great about this is that Chasing Chasing Amy explores almost every aspect of the film from multiple perspectives, though it doesn’t attempt to bring up an idea of revisionism, accepting the film for what it is while recognizing its impact on people. It takes this and combines it with really real emotions, feelings, and realizations, transforming what could be a fan-film love letter into a true piece of self-identification and reclamation.
The film, paced strongly, is neither an easy nor a hard watch, unafraid to address the darker side of feeling alone, doing so through conversations with Sav and Riley and through Sav’s 2018 TedTalk, which serves as an introduction to the film. It knows the surface material it’s addressing and does so in a creative manner that, while referencing the original film, feels fresh, unlike most documentaries we’ve seen in recent years. It’s a strong directorial effort for Sav Rodgers, who clearly knows how to display vulnerability and happiness, creating an entertaining — and enlightening — whirlwind of passion.
Chasing Chasing Amy premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival on June 8.
