I Wasn't Even Supposed to BE Here Today ... Clerks II Review!

CLERKS II Review:

When I first heard about Clerks II (initially dubbed "The Passion of the Clerks"), I was kind of annoyed. I mean, at one time Kevin Smith was the great white hope for a new generation of filmmakers. As I've said in previous posts - the breath of fresh air that was Clerks and to a slightly lesser extent Mallrats seemed to be the coming out party for the next great writer/director. Here was a guy in Smith who, with limited money and resources, made movies that felt more real, more authentic, than anything else coming out at the time. Smith captured his voice in his characters - he fed lines to Dante and Randall and Jay and Brodie that not only reflected his own personality, but seemed to capture, please excuse the cliche, the voice of a generation - of outcasts, geeks, burnouts, and everymen. Soon, Kevin Smith had created his own fictional meta-verse, where the mundane suburbs of New Jersey met with over the top characters like Jay and Silent Bob. But after movies like Dogma and Jay and Silent Bob Strikes Back disappointed many, the question became - "what's next?" Smith had a few acclaimed runs as a comic book writer - on Daredevil and Green Arrow, notably, and the strength of that writing seemed to prove that Smith was moving past the View Askewniverse - he was set for his Big Movie - his epic. It was clear that he could write more than just dudes talking about sex and comics. So Kevin Smith seemed to take the next step - he was hired by Warner Bros to write big screen superheroes - not just any mind you - they hired him to write the Superman movie - the holy grail of big-budget movies. Despite generally positive feedback, Smith's take on Superman never moved past the script stage. Next up for him was a gig writing and directing Green Hornet - an adaptation of the cult classic TV show. It could have been Smith's move from Woody Allen style, talky indie auteurism into Tarantino-ish action / adventure. But Smith was overwhelmed by the project and called it off.

Then came Jersey Girl - a return to a smaller-scale, but a new low for Smith in terms of critical reception. Sure, it suffered from the whole Bennifer thing, but still, it had none of the brashness, the humor, the authenticity of, say, Clerks.

So with Clerks II, Kevin Smith basically said "screw it," and revisited his one movie that was both criticially acclaimed and beloved by fandom. So yeah, I was annoyed. I wanted to see Kevin Smith's unique sensibilities transplanted to an action movie, or science fiction, or anything other than another Jay and Silent Bob movie.

But after a while, I realized what Smith himself probably realized - this is what he does. Sure, he may write the occasional comic book, and he may yet branch out into new thematic territory, but with Clerks II he went back and made a legit Kevin Smith movie. And just like I'm not clamoring for Christopher Guest to make an action film or John Woo to do a comedy, I can accept that maybe this is Kevin Smith's little niche and this is what he'll do. Because when Smith is on his game, like he is here, he creates some of the funniest comedies around.

The fact is that Clerks II is excellent. Right now I'd call it my third favorite Kevin Smith movie behind Clerks and Mallrats, though that could change. But this one is a real achievement for Smith, because it's probably his first movie to effectively be both hilarious and yet also sentimental. I say effectively because Smith has done annoyingly sentimental in Chasing Amy and Jersey Girl, and underwhelmingly funny in Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back. This movie had me laughing out loud but also had me legitimately into the emotions of the main characters - characters, mind you, who spend most of the movie talking about things like the relative virtues of ass-to-mouth contact.

And a sidenote - seriously, what is wrong with Joel Siegal? I'm sure the guy has seen a lot of movies in his time. Since he's a professional film critic, he's probably seen the works of John Waters. He's seen raunchy comedies like American Pie and the like. So some crass humor about "interspecies erotica" is so offensive to him that he makes Clerks II the first movie he walks out of in 30 years, loudly dissing them movie as he exits the theater?!?! Okay ...

But make no mistake about it, Clerks II pushes the limit - I'm almost surprised it got away with a mere R-rating. While the overarching plot of the film is essentially about two best friends at a crossroads in life, and is actually very sentimental, the meat of the film is classic Kevin Smith - humor so crude that even the most impossible to phase fan will be legit shocked at some of the stuff going on. I know I was. But I was also laughing my ass off - this film is very funny, and mixes the witty banter of Clerks with the visual and slapstick humor of Mallrats to great comedic effect. You've got guys getting their groove on with donkeys, impromptu dance scenes, Jay baring all, and more - enough vulgar humor to satisfy anyone's inner 13 year old. With Clerks 2, I'd have to say Smith sets a new standard for comedic vulgarity - but it's not so much in a "I'm here to shock you" kind of way, just in a "I'm gonna let you in to my sick, depraved world of adolescent humor" kind of way. You know how with your best friends you feel free to joke about things you wouldn't with most? Well here, the entire audience is Smith's best friend - he's as unfiltered with us as he might be with his old college roommate.

Then you've got the classic geek convos. The defining moment of Clerks that forever made Smith a geek icon was probably Dante and Randall's classic Star Wars-centric debates. Here Smith once again simultaneously pays homage to and mocks the fanboy mentality as his characters debate the merits of Transformers, weigh in on Lord of the Rings, and wonder when conventional jail cells will be replaced with carbonite freezing chambers. I have to say that I was a little surprised by the character of Elias - who basically is a caricature of a huge nerd / repressed Catholic. I was surprised that Kevin Smith, who has in the past glorified the geek, creating two of the coolest nerds ever on film in Clerks' Randall and Mallrats' Brodie, would create a character basically existing to be mocked. But hey, Elias was a.) hilarious, and b.) served a purpose of giving Randall someone to ruthlessly mock and reflect on the messed-up state of kids these days, as if to say that Randall's brand of old school, badass / smart-mouthed geekdom trumps Elias' repressed, new-school brand of web-wired nerdiness. Whatever the case, Elias made me laugh, so whatever his "point" is in the movie, it is overshadowed by the hilarity of seeing Elias drunk and way too into a performance of "interspecies erotica."

And again, Smith trots out an amusing parade of cameos - lost souls who wander into Mooby's fast food restaurant and inevitably stir up trouble. You've got View Askew royalty, Jason Lee, making a great cameo. Wanda Sykes, always funny in brief appearances, inciting a hilarious debate over the usage of various racial slurs. Jason Lee's My Name Is Earl partner in crime, Ethan Suplee, is always welcome in any movie as far as I'm concerned, and even Ben Affleck, Smith's good pal, makes a nice little cameo. Sure, it would have been cool to see Jason Lee as Brodie appear, but hey, Smith packs in enough nods to previous films to satiate any View Askew fanboy. Milkmaids, Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back, and "I'm not even supposed to be here today" all get referenced.

And as far as the main characters - man, I love these guys. Just the way everything Randall says is dripping with a smartass sarcasm and bitterness barely concealing his own feelings of patheticness. The way Dante has this Charlie Brown like sincerity that causes him to wax emotively on his fears about getting married and his opposition to ass-to-mouth contact with equal amounts of sincerity. Are these guys good actors? Who knows. As far as this movie goes, they ARE Dante and Randall. They have double chins, bad skin, are balding, and in the case of Dante, the guy is just plain ugly. By the end of the movie, they don't feel like actors, even if their acting skills aren't going to compared to Olivier anytime soon.

And that, however, is almost the one fatal flaw of this movie. Dante Hicks, ten years after the first Clerks, is such a pathetic, weird-looking dude that him wooing two women at once, one of which is Rosario Dawson, strains credibility to the absolute extremes. Smith's direction doesn't flatter his actors either - he presents them in harsh lighting and awkward angles. The guys look every bit of the washed up thirty-somethings that their characters are supposed to be. At least in the original Clerks, the women Dante had to choose between were pretty average looking as well, neither one a real winner in looks or in personality. But here, Rosario Dawson is basically a geek goddess - sure, she's a mere manager at Mooby's, but in every other way she is playing a dream girl. And of all people she likes a fat, rapidly aging, ugly bastard like Dante Hicks? A guy who is ALREADY engaged to marry a lean blond? This one stretch of credibility was almost a deal-breaker, but you know what ... after a while I just kind of accepted it. Kevin Smith eased things by at least having the script, via Randall, acknowledge the fact that Dante's situation was pretty improbable. So whatever, in the end it turned out not to be that big of a deal. Because when confronted with a Rosario Dawson, all of us semi-geeky guys would probably feel a bit like Dante Hicks looks, ya know?

Anyways ... the movie worked for me. In the end, even the walking-the-line-of cheesy ending won me over, and I got caught up in the fun and nostalgia of having the picture revert to grainy black and white as Soul Asylum's "Misery" played, channelling the spirit of the early 90's days of grunge and angst and Clerks 1 to great effect. By the end of the film, I was ready to revisit more of the View Askewniverse, eager to check back in with the adventures of Dante and Randall every few years and see what those guys were up to, just like you might check in with your old buddy from high school who used to make you laugh, just like faux Onion columnist Jim Anchower reappears every few months and begins his latest tale of slacker woe with "Well, it's been a long time since I rapped at ya ..."

It had been a long time since we last checked in with the guys from Clerks, and it really was like hanging out with old friends - so on that level Kevin Smith really accomplished something here. Plus, he made a damn funny movie, and reminded me why I ever liked Kevin Smith or Clerks or Jay and Silent Bob in the first place. At its core this is just a movie about a few geeks talking about vulgar or nerdy stuff. But there's also a lot of heart here, a real sense of time passing - of it really having been ten years since Clerks - since it really HAS been that long. It's a flawed movie, a simplistic movie in some ways, and yeah, it's basically just rehashing many of the same old themes from Clerks, without the same sense of newness or importance or cultural relevance that that movie had - that one was a real product of the 90's - and so is this one, to an extent - a revisitation of what was once great but is now merely very good. But it does recapture that old grittiness, that old bite. It made me want to go home, write down some snappy dialogue, and make a movie. And it made me care, in a way I haven't in a long time, about what's next from Kevin Smith.

My Grade: A -