To answer a question that was never asked of me, my ride-or-die fast food joint is Burger King. I do not, do NOT care about your thought piece on its declining place in the chain dynasty, or how no one thinks of the Whopper before the Big Mac. I have no justification for Burger King’s artery-clogged place in my heart (and perhaps taking the Veggie Burger off the menu has eroded some of my loyalty), except that it’s what I grew up with.

Therefore, it felt like serendipity when my long-harbored crush in high school used the Burger King mascot as his Facebook profile picture. Him, a proud fan! Did it make sense that I once overheard him say in math class that BK fries are garbage? It doesn’t matter, because only true fans would (and should) say it.

Skip to 2021, where my world has been re-rocked. Not just by the pandemic, which had shoved me into the warm crevices of my couch to utilize any and all streaming services. It was when I decided to watch Dogma, the Gen X stoner’s Wizard of Oz, where I found out that my crush’s profile picture wasn’t of the creepy King mascot, but of the less-creepy Buddy Christ, the film’s Catholic Church’s PR campaign (“Catholicism – Wow!”) to reinvigorate mass faith after a series of reputational shortcomings. 

Though the King didn’t debut in Burger King’s advertising until five years later, it feels somewhat cosmic that they look similar. The fictional Mooby’s in Dogma was reconstructed in a closed Burger King location in the Pittsburgh area, only later brought to life for real at another Burger King that Smith used to frequent as a kid in New Jersey. Though Mooby’s is represented as a sort of commercialized thorn, it’s no surprise that so much of Smith’s movies are informed by his life and interests. His latest film, The 4:30 Movie, which came out thirty years after Clerks, still features his squad of sour-puss men, young fanatics with ravenous attention to movies, and hearts of misfit gold.

Dogma: Resurrected! might seem like part of the fad to regain the nostalgic crowd. But after a long fight in obtaining the film’s rights from Harvey Weinstein’s company, Dogma gets to shine in theaters and at Cannes again. Debating whether it’s worthy of a screening at a prestigious festival (though value seems more like a rhetorical question now that The Idol has had its world premiere there) is not as important as its role of the View Askewniverse. Compared to Smith’s earlier films, which capture the essence of what bumming around town means, Dogma is expansive – geographically (we’re not just in New Jersey, Toto!), financially, and thematically.

Matt Damon and Ben Affleck (the latter of whom had starred in 1995’s Mallrats and 1997’s Chasing Amy) carry over their on-screen banter from Good Will Hunting as Loki and Bartleby, angels shunned from Heaven. They find a loophole to get back through the gates of Heaven: enter a rechristened church that announced repentance of all sins. If they are able to walk through the gate and somehow become human to then die as one, then God would surely let them in.

If I were to get in someone’s good graces, demonstrating their creational flaws doesn’t feel remotely close to offering an olive branch. The angels’ narrowed solution to the end of their suffering (roaming on Earth for millennia) seems dissatisfying in a Biblical sense, but as angry, young white men, it fits the bill of getting what they want + sticking it to the Man. We don’t follow just their pilgrimage to the church; in this tableau of disillusionment and blind faith, we have Bethany (Linda Fiorentino), an abortion clinic worker who is tasked by the seraphim Metatron (Alan Rickman) to stop the angels from contradicting the word of God. Bethany is no further skeptical from the moment she is introduced to us to the time she is rescued by Jay and Silent Bob (no introduction needed) to the time the 13th apostle (Chris Rock) falls from the sky. By the time the gang comes across a literal poop demon, Bethany’s distance from faith might even put into another plane of disbelief.

In the pits of hell is Azrael (Jason Lee), a demon with a recognizable sinful appreciation for central air conditioning and existential chaos (if any casting director was precarious with their resources, they’d make sure that Lee plays a loud-mouthed demon for the best bang for their buck). Many of these roles feel like they are set up for obvious parallels with the Bible, which I can usually do without. But watching Dogma again in the lens of a new release makes the characters feel even more satirical – less of the sketch comedy har-har and more of intellectual underlining of moral inconsistencies. It also helps that the world 25 years later is more shitty and the word of God has been used as political spearheads to legislation. I’m not sure how Loki and Bartleby would even begin to fathom Charlie Kirk, nor would I know how Charlie Kirk would dissect an surprisingly evergreen joke about two white men who could openly discuss bloodbaths in front of a gun store associate.

Instinctively, I would not think that Kevin Smith movies would get better with age. The humor is built on the house of the crude and obscene, but it’s the openness of terrible characters that feel like we move away from what’s being said to who’s saying it and who’s suffering from him. God should be a woman (shall I say it? Dogma backwards is AM God), and Smith will make that happen. It seems rather convenient that all the apostles are somehow white, so Smith has given us Rufus in the form of a vivacious young Chris Rock. Ideas that seemed controversial at the time now feel like the rest of America has caught up.

While I may have not recognized Buddy Christ before (nor do I think Burger King will ever comment on paper whether it had influenced the King’s creation), I think Smith somehow performed a pretty slick move. And in the resurrected Church of View Askew, it feels right to share some of my own favorite lines from the Bible:

• Loki 77:45: I have seen what happens to the proud when they take on the throne.
• Serendipity 58:15: It doesn’t matter what you have faith in — just that you have faith.
• Jay 37:48: Beautiful, naked, big-tittied women just don’t fall out of the sky.

Dogma: Resurrected! A 25th Anniversary
1999
dir. Kevin Smith
130 min.

Now playing at AMC Assembly Row