Review of Clerks II (2006) by Kc T — 08 Aug 2012

Twelve years ago, no one thought that a tiny $12,000 movie about pop-culture know-it-alls languishing in the confines of a convenience store would become an opus for a generation. Then again, no one writes like Kevin Smith. His dialogue is like a rhythmic dance, the characters speak in a manner that spirals around in long diatribes and lands right on target. Even in Smith's worst films, the dialogue is always sharp. A decade has gone by since Clerks found two slacker geeks Randal and Dante marveling at theories about the unjust fate of a hapless contractor working on the second Death Star just as Lando Calrissian blew it to tiny Imperial meatballs, but his rhythm hasn't changed.

Maybe that's because this is a world Kevin Smith never left. His films take place in a concealed world of consumer junkies who veg on fast food, complain about movies, porn, weird sexual practices and speak in the tone of a poetic smart-ass. In his subsequent films, Mallrats, Chasing Amy, Dogma and Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back, it's all the same world, containing most of the same characters but if you watch them chronologically you can see Smith perfecting his craft.

What Clerks II has that the earlier film didn't is that we can see that Smith has grown up as a writer and a director. The earlier film was simply a day in the life as we follow the open to close adventures of two twenty year-olds who talk about the ambition to get out and do something with their lives but don't seem to have the energy to get to the starting gate. This film sees them twelve years later, now in their 30s and not much has changed except that Dante is now on the cusp of leaving for Florida for an exciting life of marriage and a job behind the counter of a car wash. Randal is still mired in a life of porn, Star Wars and bizarre theories about everything from Lord of the Rings, to the biblical ramifications of The Transformers while trying to convince Dante that he's diving into marriage for all the wrong reasons.

The wisest decision that went into Clerks II is that Smith has stuck with the basics. He's more established now and he has a bigger budget but he keeps the basics of Clerks well intact. The biggest difference is color and a plot. Instead of just endless rants about pop culture and porn, Clerks II is framed by an actual story inspired somewhat by the emotional territory he explored in Chasing Amy. After Randal burns down the Quick Stop, he and Dante are forced to find employment elsewhere and their upward move lands them behind the counter at Mooby's fast food joint.

Dante is blinded by his affections for Emma, his fiancé who boldly dances around in a shirt embossed with "Mrs. Hicks" (she's played by Jennifer Schwalbach who is also Mrs. Kevin Smith) and we sense right away that the motivation is an escape from one customer service job to another. He also finds that a long-ago affair that he had with his manager Becky (Rosario Dawson) isn't finished yet and we don't have to guess where the story will go. But at the hands of Kevin Smith we care what happens when it gets there.

What is so clever about Smith is that the love story between these three are really just window dressing for the real love story - the one that has kept Randal and Dante suctioned to each other's hips since grade school (in a totally hetro way, of course). The closings scenes are so much more clever and well written than any movie he's made since Chasing Amy and Smith's love for his characters lands them at an ending that is just perfect.

That's not to say that the movie is an emotional epic. Those elements exist around the edges of the movie around long theories that are brilliant and - in their own weird way - have a point. The movie contains those long crude conversations between pop culture intellectuals that in a strange way mirror conversations in my own life, plus it also contains more porn speak than any movie I can remember and spirals to a climax involving donkey sex that is spun out of a BIG miscommunication.

The best comes as the Star Wars loving Randal verbally demolishes a Lord of the Rings fan and I was so glad that Smith agreed with me that Return of the King had too many endings. I also applauded the admission that LOTR was a movie about walking, walking, walking, walking and even Randal admits "Even the TREES walked!!" Randal constantly finds joy in dismantling the aura of Elias, a happy bible camp refugee so insecure that he speaks as if he has to consider every word. The scene in which he blows Randal's mind with a confession about "Pants Trolls" is brilliant. Another involving a lengthy debate about a certain racial slur was cringe-inducing and, for me, produced the film's only thud.

For the first time I actually loved the presence of wall-hangers Jay and Silent Bob, who have become this generation's Cheech and Chong, they have changed venues and now hang outside Mooby's. There's a running joke involving the killer's dance in Silence of the Lambs that produced one of the biggest laughs in the movie.

The best thing about Clerks II is that Smith realizes what made his earlier film work, he doesn't shy away from crude humor and buckets of profanity but he doesn't go too over the top - even a scene involving donkey sex earns it's laughs. Needless to say, it helps to be schooled in movie trivia especially Smith's earlier films but it's a school I am glad I've attended.