Kevin Smith: Clerks II
I’ve made my thoughts on Kevin Smith clear in a previous post. In a nutshell, I used to be keen on him, not so much now. And when I heard that he was making a sequel to what I consider his only good film, I was concerned that he’d somehow manage to ruin my happy memories of the original. So it was with a certain amount of dread, scepticism and schadenfreude that I downloaded and watched the film.
The film starts out by setting up a new status quo: after 10 years at the Quick Stop, Randall and Dante find themselves out of work when the place burns down. They end up working at Mooby’s, a fast food restaurant in the style of McDonald’s. Jay and Silent Bob are out of rehab and have found God, but are still dealing. Dante is engaged to some hot blonde and about to move down to Florida to start a new job and get married.
All this is established early on, and leaves Smith enough time and space to turn everything on its head. He introduces a complication with Dante’s one-night stand with his boss, and the whole film hinges on the question of what Dante will do. The answer is never really in doubt, but the twist ending is something completely unrelated and out of left field. As a piece of plotting, it’s very tight, but Smith has never been a filmmaker overly concerned with plot. People come to his films for the dialogue, and this film has some great moments.
Most of these are, of course, delivered by the awesome Randall Graves, played by the equally awesome Jeff Anderson. His various diatribes are fantastic, and his constant teasing of religious colleague Elias is often laugh-out-loud funny stuff. His reaction to Elias’ description of Pillow Pants and his recreation of the Lord of the Rings trilogy, as well as his attempt to take back the expression ‘porch monkey’ despite it being a racial slur are hilarious. Unfortunately, there are many less funny moments. As Mallrats proved, Smith doesn’t really have much of a sense for visual or slapstick comedy.
The great thing about the original Clerks film was that a lot of action had to take place of camera, principally due to budget restraints. In particular, I’m thinking of the necrophilic denouement. There is a similar scene here involving bestiality, but instead of taking place off camera, we get to see a lot more than I would have liked. Add to this that the joke wears thin very quickly once Randal realises there’s no woman involved, and I can only conclude that Smith find this far more amusing than I do. It simply goes on far too long to be funny.
In all, Smith manages to make a decent film. There are some genuinely funny moments, basically whenever Randal opens his mouth, and the plot and more especially the ending actually give a nice close to the franchise. So while certainly not on par with the original, at least Smith manages not to piss on his legacy.
The film starts out by setting up a new status quo: after 10 years at the Quick Stop, Randall and Dante find themselves out of work when the place burns down. They end up working at Mooby’s, a fast food restaurant in the style of McDonald’s. Jay and Silent Bob are out of rehab and have found God, but are still dealing. Dante is engaged to some hot blonde and about to move down to Florida to start a new job and get married.
All this is established early on, and leaves Smith enough time and space to turn everything on its head. He introduces a complication with Dante’s one-night stand with his boss, and the whole film hinges on the question of what Dante will do. The answer is never really in doubt, but the twist ending is something completely unrelated and out of left field. As a piece of plotting, it’s very tight, but Smith has never been a filmmaker overly concerned with plot. People come to his films for the dialogue, and this film has some great moments.
Most of these are, of course, delivered by the awesome Randall Graves, played by the equally awesome Jeff Anderson. His various diatribes are fantastic, and his constant teasing of religious colleague Elias is often laugh-out-loud funny stuff. His reaction to Elias’ description of Pillow Pants and his recreation of the Lord of the Rings trilogy, as well as his attempt to take back the expression ‘porch monkey’ despite it being a racial slur are hilarious. Unfortunately, there are many less funny moments. As Mallrats proved, Smith doesn’t really have much of a sense for visual or slapstick comedy.
The great thing about the original Clerks film was that a lot of action had to take place of camera, principally due to budget restraints. In particular, I’m thinking of the necrophilic denouement. There is a similar scene here involving bestiality, but instead of taking place off camera, we get to see a lot more than I would have liked. Add to this that the joke wears thin very quickly once Randal realises there’s no woman involved, and I can only conclude that Smith find this far more amusing than I do. It simply goes on far too long to be funny.
In all, Smith manages to make a decent film. There are some genuinely funny moments, basically whenever Randal opens his mouth, and the plot and more especially the ending actually give a nice close to the franchise. So while certainly not on par with the original, at least Smith manages not to piss on his legacy.
posted by Ryan Stephens at 3:08 PM
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