The Movie: I originally reviewed this movie about a year ago, but I am re-reviewing it, as my original review was pretty useless. If you really want to see the text from the original, click HERE.

Chasing Amy is the third of Kevin Smith's View Askewniverse movies (which include Clerks, Mallrats, Chasing Amy, Dogma and Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back), which make plenty of references to each other. No previous experience with the other movies is necessary as each one stands quite well on its own, but it will help make you feel super cool and/or nerdy when you can pick out these references.

Chasing Amy is by far the most personal movie that Kevin Smith has made thus far, and it deals on a deep level with issues of love, friendship, and relationships, and although the specifics of the situations these characters are in may be quite extreme, Chasing Amy deals with them in ways that the audience can identify with. In this film, you will likely find a scene or two that depicts a time and place that you yourself has likely been in before, and does so with a gritty, low-budgetness that really hits home.

To summarize the plot, Holden McNeil (played by Ben Affleck) and Banky Edwards (played by Jason Lee) have been best friends for years. Holden meets Alyssa Jones (played by Joey Lauren Adams), but doesn't realize that she's gay, and pursues her. Holden's pursuit of Alyssa strains his friendship with Banky. Eventually Holden finds out that Alyssa is gay, but they fall in love anyway. Banky, in an attempt to sabotage the relationships, reveals some sordid details of Alyssa's past that trouble Holden greatly, and everyone gets to deal with all their issues.

This film features some very powerful performances by Ben Affleck, Jason Lee, and Joey Lauren Adams, who deliver Kevin Smith's very real script to the screen in a way that really bring back the types of emotions we've all felt in situations we've all been in. Is this a chick flick? Perhaps, but it's one that will have the manliest of men pondering the consequences of some of their actions in the past, I'm sure.

The DVD: This Criterion release features an anamorphic transfer that looks pretty damned grainy, but that's just because this transfer is just conveying every bit of grain that you would find on the original 16mm film this movie was shot on. You still get a sharp transfer with great color, and virtually no compression artifacts to be found. This is probably the best transfer of a 16mm film I can remember seeing.

The audio is pretty unspectacular, but I'm sure it's a limited by the low-budget nature of the original film and not a problem with the transfer.

There are quite a few special features, including an introduction to the DVD by Kevin Smith where he divulges the information that the stuff on this DVD is exactly the same stuff (no more, no less) than what was on the laserdisc when Chasing Amy was released in that format. But he also talks about how at times in the audio commentary track, you may hear him talking bad about the DVD format and about how much it sucks. In his intro to the DVD, he recanted this statement, and declared that DVD is indeed a really cool format for movies.

This commentary track includes Kevin Smith, Ben Affleck, Jason Mewes, Scott Mosier (producer), and a couple of other guys I can't remember right now, all sitting in a room talking about this movie. At times the interaction between the people is just plain hilarious, and at other times they offer some insight into the process of making this film, from the performances of the actors down to technical details of the production.

The deleted scenes were for the most part better left on the cutting room floor, but each one comes with a video introduction by Kevin Smith, and others, and as I mentioned in my previous review of this DVD -- these intros were very unflattering to Ben Affleck's appearance.

There's also a trailer (cut in 4:3), and a pretty cool little insert booklet in the case that has some words from Kevin Smith about why he made this film, and also a neat diagram that gives an overview of all of the characters seen in the View Askew movies up to Chasing Amy. All in all, a DVD release worthy of the film.