Trailer for Kevin Smith's ‘The 4:30 Movie' ...

It’s impossible to have gone through ’90s indie cinema and not be familiar with Kevin Smith’s brand of slacker moviemaking. Between 1994 and 2001, Smith basically became the spokesman for a misfit generation of geeky basement dwellers with his films “Clerks,” “Chasing Amy,” “Mallrats,” “Dogma” and “Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back.”

What bound all of those lo-fi 90s film together, beyond their DIY, stitched-together spirit, sophomoric jokes, and (arguably unearned confidence), was their zealous enthusiasm about geeks inheriting the earth and chutzpah-y, can-do-it worldview. And tons of dick jokes. Smith, like Richard Linklater before him, demonstrated to an entire generation of audiences, that you too could make a movie if you were willing to max out your credit card and carried a plucky attitude.

Surely, these lowbrow antics wouldn’t be able to carry on into the next generation, but the 54-year-old Smith has been struggling to find a groove of late in the post-“Dogma” phase of his career. Mostly working on B-movies and low-rent Hollywood vehicles, some of which worked (“Red State“) while most others didn’t (“Yoga Hosers,” “Tusk,” “Cop Out,“ “Clerks III”), Smith has been trying to find himself by trying to reinvent his style, sometimes with each ensuing film.

I’m not exactly sure what Smith is going for in “The 4:30 Movie,” set for theatrical release on September 13. Judging by the just-released trailer, Smith most certainly does not have the kind of budget he once had in the late ‘90s. I don’t think he ever will again. Critics have more or less turned against him, and he’s not helping his case either. “The 4:30 Movie” looks like a mess, telling the story of a teen who finally, somehow, lands a date with his dream girl. But that’s when things go crazy, and the teen (plus his buddies) cause chaos at the local movie theater.