Patty was out of town and so we opted for father-son night at the movies. No e-mail please about how inappropriate this movie was for teenagers. The audience was nothing BUT teenagers. In point of fact, I was by far the oldest one in the audience. The rest had figured out how to beat the “Rated R” label.

SUMMARY:

Dante Hicks (Brian O’Halloran) and best friend Randall Graves (Jeff Anderson) find themselves out of jobs they have held for a decade after the Quik-Stop burns down. They resurface at a burger joint called Mooby’s, managed by spunky Becky, (Rosario Dawson), where Dante finds himself at a crossroads in his life.

STEVE SAYS:

I saw the original CLERKS at the 1994 Sundance Film Festival and loved it. For all its technical flaws, this grainy black & white film, made for only $27,000, has charm, an underlying earnest quality and tons of great jokes. But I have to admit that I haven’t really liked any of Kevin Smith’s movies since then. He simply hasn’t grown as an artist. CLERKS 2 is ample proof of that. Even with a substantially bigger budget, Smith revisits his characters and the movie looks more inept than the original. While the production values are better, the writing is staid and self-conscious. Smith tries so very hard to be in-your-face gross that the effort shows. It doesn’t flow naturally out of anything. The now notorious “donkey sex” scene that prompted critic Joel Siegel to make a noisy and premature exit from a screening feels like Smith trying extra hard to be grossly funny. He succeeds at the gross part, with most of the audience squealing “Eeeeeew” throughout the scene in question. But how funny is it? I didn’t hear much laughter around me and I wasn’t exactly holding my sides in uncontrollable mirth. Smith seems as though he should be at a point in his life and career where he’s capable of making a better movie than this. But he is the first to admit that he is totally inept as a director, often with little clue as to where to put the camera or what to say to the actors. Lacking a clear vision and the skill to carry it off, Smith leaves us with another amateur-looking creation. While I find him charming and self-effacing as a personality, I’m about to give up on him as a writer/director.

Actors whom the director has been instrumental in helping to stardom, such as Ben Affleck and Jason Lee, appear in cameo roles, while the rest of the cast is populated by actors who seldom work, except in Smith’s movies.  The exception is Rosario Dawson, who gives the role of Becky her all. But it’s difficult to believe that a woman with so much going for her has been stuck managing a burger joint for the last two years and is drawn to such a loser as Dante Hicks.

This brings us to what is wrong at the core of this sequel. In 1994, we didn’t have to feel sorry for Dante, Randall and the rest of the slackers who populated CLERKS. They were young guys who hadn’t found the way in life yet, doing what they needed to do to survive. But when this film begins, it is ten years later and they’re still at the same mind-numbing, dead-end jobs. It’s hard to root for anyone with so little drive and ambition, even as they approach middle age.

O’Halloran is a modestly talented comic actor who hasn’t managed to score much outside of Smith’s universe.

Smith and Jason Mewes reprise their lovable drug-dealing slacker pair, Jay and Silent Bob. Not surprisingly, their charm has begun to wear thin after multiple appearances in Smith movies. The director says he intends to retire the pair. I hope he’s true to his word.

Smith casts his supremely untalented wife, Jennifer Schwalbach Smith, to play Dante’s fiancé, making her obnoxious enough that we will root for him to go after his “real love.” That renders the entire enterprise so predictable that we know almost from the first scene what choice Dante is going to make in the end.

The original CLERKS was pretty thin in the story department, but made up for it with some hilarious set pieces that kept us entertained. Here, Smith tries for more of a traditional, through-line story. But its thinness, coupled with the aforementioned predictability, makes CLERKS 2 a bore, filled with dialogue that sounds written and forced.

 
One and a half kernels for this sorry episode in Smith’s stagnating career.

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CHRIS SAYS:

I just saw the original CLERKS just yesterday. Then I watched all the extra features today.  CLERKS 2 does not live up to CLERKS but I still enjoyed it. Kevin is a great personality, and as far as I am concerned Jay and Silent Bob should not be retired, I haven’t seen enough of them yet. They were the source of most of the big laughs in the film. But ever since CLERKS, Kevin hasn’t matched himself.

CLERKS 2 still has some appeal to me. I enjoyed it. It made me laugh, but the storyline was as obvious as an oncoming train. There were NO surprises.

There are some jokes that were a bit obnoxious. The song “ABC” begins to play at one point and a whole crowd begins to do a very well choreographed dance in front of Mooby’s.  The movie uprooted itself from reality for the sake of a small gag that was totally unlike the rest of the film.

Clerks 2 still has some good jokes. They may be a bit juvenile (hence why I liked it), but I would watch the movie again. I had no problems with the acting. The should look for more work, in fact

My view is a bit askew from my Dads. I always have had a tendency to be a bit more lenient but I enjoyed CLERKS 2.

I am giving CLERKS 2 three kernels, and hope for a better future for Kevin.

 

P.S. Jay and Silent Bob live!!! They must not be put to rest!!

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July 29, 2006