25 Years After Its Catholic Controversy, Kevin Smith’s Dogma Is Ready to Rise Again

Right at the beginning of autumn 2024, Kevin Smith released a new movie. The 4:30 Movie, an amiably aimless ramble of adolescent reminiscence, came out in a few hundred theaters, presumably far less bustling than the ones it depicted on its semi-madcap Saturday afternoon of teenage antics. Shortly thereafter, it was rentable online for six bucks. It’s a change of pace for Smith, insofar it has no Jay nor Silent Bob; it’s also extremely familiar, with foulmouthed teens instead of twentysomethings or adults. Another cute curio for the remaining hardcore fans. This one didn’t even get one of those big roadshow engagements where most of the attraction is Smith himself doing a discursive Q&A.

In this context, it’s hard to picture one of Smith’s movies generating controversy – and in wide release, no less. But that’s the way it was 25 years ago, when Dogma, Smith’s fourth film as a writer-director, debuted in theaters nationwide, more than five years after it was foretold in the tail-end credits of Clerks. With the screenplay for a religious comedy proving tough to crack, Smith stayed closer to home for his actual follow-ups to his breakthrough indie: Mallrats is basically Clerks reconfigured as a John Hughes comedy, only about characters old enough to know better, while Chasing Amy is a more heartfelt romantic dramedy about sexual hang-ups. Together, they formed his “Jersey trilogy.” When he was finally ready to make Dogma, it represented a departure from New Jersey, at least temporarily: It became a cross-country (well, partially; Wisconsin to Jersey) odyssey after nearly-lapsed Catholic Bethany (Linda Fiorentino) is sent to stop fallen angels Loki (Matt Damon) and Bartleby (Ben Affleck) from entering a newly rededicated church and therefore enacting a Catholic loophole that will contradict God’s will and destroy existence.

The groups that protested Dogma didn’t much care that this was a movie that

(A.) took the Catholic faith at least as seriously as Smith’s beloved comic-book lore,
(B.) presumed the existence of God, and
(C.) posited that the world would literally come to an end if God’s will was defied. (Notably, no official arm of the Catholic church said anything about the film.)

The real problem, of course, was that Smith treated the subject with superficial irreverence: swear words, sex jokes, an abortion-worker heroine, and, of course, Jay and Silent Bob, the comedy duo played by Jason Mewes and Smith himself who serve as a link to his other movies, as well as sidekicks for Bethany on her journey. The hysteria ultimately didn’t amount to much beyond chasing it away from Disney corporate ownership into distribution from less risk-adverse Lionsgate. They were rewarded with Smith’s highest gross to that point. (Remarkably, even adjusting for inflation it remains his second-biggest movie ever, after the wide-release for-hire gig Cop Out.)

Yet Dogma managed to disappear anyway, well after its hot-potato status cooled. Harvey and Bob Weinstein made the film at Disney-owned Miramax, and when Disney balked at releasing it, the Weinsteins bought it back and licensed it to Lionsgate (for theatrical) and Sony (for home video). But those licenses expired, and the rights stayed with the Weinsteins, rather than the greater Miramax catalog – meaning that not only did the DVD and Blu-ray releases go out of print, any future releases or streaming deals would put money in the pocket of convicted rapist Harvey Weinstein. Understandably, Smith wasn’t interested – but now the rights have been acquired by another party, and they’re planning an eventual re-release in theaters and at home, with Smith’s participation.

Some of us, however, did hang on to those double-disc special-edition DVDs that once commanded hefty secondhand prices. (For what it’s worth, you can currently buy Dogma on disc for reasonable-ish prices, though it seems like a better edition will be worth waiting for.) Revisiting the film a quarter-century later, it stands out less as a work of blasphemy – again, it’s pretty respectful to Catholicism, all things considered, and amusingly steeped in arcana that doesn’t typically make it into the Catholic mindset of Martin Scorsese’s movies – than Smith’s most convincing play for a post-Jersey afterlife. Yes, it has plenty of his golden-years rep company, and yes, it co-stars Jay and Silent Bob, alongside some other little references to the first three Smith films. But compared to his many later attempts to step outside the so-called View Askewniverse, Dogma feels richly imagined, maybe because the Catholic stuff gives Smith a fresh batch of characters and ideas to realign with his loquacious-nerd image.

Damon and Affleck are particularly leveled-up as Loki and Bartleby, needling and debating each other as they make their way to Jersey with a few stops for Loki’s bloody wrath along the way. Scenes like the one where Loki dresses down the corporate board of a Disney-like company, rattling off their various sins before a mass execution, feel bonded to Smith’s fellow Miramax bad boy Quentin Tarantino (only Loki knows actual scripture, not a misquoted/made up version); it’s a bit juvenile, sure, but it also feels so much further outside the Kevin Smith bubble than his other buddy-comedy teams, while still leaving space for a debate about the box office potential of Krush Groove. After the intentional and effective confines of his first three movies (convenience store, mall, various Jersey haunts), Dogma saw Smith opening up into a wider world.

Now, does he shoot that wider world all that well? Ah, maybe not. Despite the work of longtime Wes Anderson cinematographer Robert Yeoman, Smith remains a limited visual storyteller, and at a time when Steven Soderbergh can make a great-looking movie on an iPhone, Dogma looks unmistakably like a grody ’90s indie, with some truly rudimentary framing. Yet that lack of polish, too, has a charm lacking in so many antiseptically low-budget productions of today, including Smith’s. Moreover, merging a fantastical epic where humanity hangs in the balance with a scrappy, talky slacker comedy now feels prescient, as the ’90s indie-film boom would give way to (some) filmmakers attaining bigger stars and budgets in the decade that followed – before largely getting overwhelmed by more traditional forms of the fantastical epic.

It’s bittersweet, knowing that this has remained Smith’s most ambitious production, 25 years later – though not necessarily shocking that the director of Clerks generally feels more comfortable working small and personal. The thing is, though: Dogma is also personal. It speaks to Smith’s Catholic faith, his ability to see God in this world and actually find some solace in that. The way that Catholicism opens up Smith’s work, rather than sequestering it in the comics shop, is far more touching, in its weary hopefulness, than the faith-based movies that became increasingly frequent in the wake of Mel Gibson’s Catholic gorefest The Passion of the Christ. Smith may not summon the same religious angst of fellow Movie Catholic Martin Scorsese, and he may prefer to debate semantics and side-character superpowers over addressing the church’s more challenging ailments. But for a couple of hours, he seemed ready to send Jay and Silent Bob toward stranger, less familiar horizons.

Jesse Hassenger is associate movies editor at Paste. He also writes about movies and other pop-culture stuff for a bunch of outlets including A.V. Club, GQ, Decider, the Daily Beast, and SportsAlcohol.com, where offerings include an informal podcast. He also co-hosts the New Flesh, a podcast about horror movies, and wastes time on Twitter under the handle @rockmarooned.