Kickstarting his career with a loose trilogy - Clerks, Mallrats and Chasing Amy - perhaps lulled Kevin Smith's audience into a false sense of security. He seemed to be mapping out his own alternate universe, with downtown New Jersey acting as a drop-out ghetto where amiably jaded youth gathered in grocery stores, shopping malls and (when they got older) rundown bars and diners. One step on from Tarantinoworld's comic-book referencing, Smithworld simply was comic-book, with lighting that captured perfectly the ink-on-pulp artwork of his beloved Marvel strips.

Although the film has already proven a source of uneasiness in the States - Miramax discreetly bought it back from parent company Disney before any corporate embarrassment could be caused - Smith is bewildered by suggestions that the film is any way sacriligious. "Predominantly, what I've always done is relationship movies, and this is a farce and a fantasy about the relationship with God. But no one can mistake it for any sort of tome or a text." Instead, Smith sees it is a light-hearted attempt to represent the headache-inducing theological questions that swirl around everyone's head at sometime or another. "It started with me asking some questions about my own faith," he says, "but the flick doesn't attempt to hold out answers to any of those questions. It's meant to make you laugh." Steve Grayson