Kevin Smith’s Spoilers: A Strong Debut

Filmmaker and comic book writer Kevin Smith, whose TV series Comic Book Men was recently picked up for a second season on AMC, launched a second half-hour show today, the Hulu webseries Spoilers With Kevin Smith.The series is set up like a talk show, except that instead of a monologue, the first segment of the show features Smith’s trademark Q&A-style interaction with the audience. Here, though, the twist is that Smith attends a movie screening with a group of fans who join him afterwards in studio for an uncensored chat about what they’ve just experienced.The premiere, titled “Girls Just Wanna Have Guns,” examines Snow White & the Huntsman, with the audience consensus being that the film was beautifully shot and mostly entertaining, but short on plot and character development and that star Kristen Stewart didn’t bring much to the table. That segment is a welcome addition to the film criticism landscape, not just because it’s refreshingly different from anything else out there but because we haven’t had a truly entertaining movie-review talk show since Gene Siskel died and left the esteemed Siskel & Ebert team to deteriorate.Between the segments is the most entertaining sponsorship break I’ve ever seen–a long-form ad for the Criterion Collection special edition DVDs, which have an agreement with Spoilers‘ producer Hulu. Rather than just do a personal endorsement, though, Smith uses the time to examine some of his favorite films available through the Criterion Collection (this time, Jim Jarmusch’s indie classic Stranger Than Paradise), which tellingly, Smith suggests first that fans should buy at a brick-and-mortar store, and that if they can’t or won’t then they can check out the movie (sans features) for free on Hulu.