Clerks II

Clerks II is the ambitious and enjoyable follow-up to the 1994 hit indie film Clerks. It follows the continued adventures of Smith’s unlikely heroes Dante Hicks, Brian O’Halloran, and Randal Graves, Jeff Anderson. Clerks II has all of the profanity and general perversion of the first film but it adds color film, a progressive story, and a little star power in Rosario Dawson. See what a million dollars or two can get you.

Clerks II is a great film but after all Kevin Smith movies are Kevin Smith movies. They are not for everyone. They truly earn their R rating though they never show any particular violence or nudity; they just talk about it, incessantly. Clerks almost earned an NC-17 rating when it was first released. Smith half expected to have the same problems with Clerks II but the MPAA rating system has become somewhat more lax than in the intervening years. There are acts that are never generally spoken about in polite society liberally canvassed and repeated by the characters. But that isn’t what the film is about and Kevin Smith fans know that all of his films do have a heart somewhere. Here the story is all about Dante and Randal’s friendship and what their expectations are for the future.

Kevin Smith made the now legendary Clerks in black and white for 27,000 dollars on his credit card. Clerks launched Kevin Smith on a successful film career and reinvigorated the independent film industry. The film was about two slackers and their lousy clerk jobs at a Quick-Stop in New Jersey. In Clerks II everyone has grown older though not necessarily wiser. Kevin Smith has obviously grown as a writer and director and it is evident in this clever story. He still has a knack for clever dialogue but he is now better able to tell a story and weave together a semblance of a plot for even these directionless goof-offs. Since Clerks II was given a 5 million dollar budget this time the film is guaranteed to make back its costs in the first week of release and everything after that is profit for the Weinsteins. Not much of a gamble at all.

Clerks changed the landscape of independent films when it was picked up by the Weinsteins in 1994. It showed the disenfranchised slacker youths of the early 90s in all of their f-bomb laden glory. It also showed how a little black and white film that looks like it was made by a monkey holding a camera could make a modest profit at the box office and go on to be a mega-cult-classic through a combination of word-of-mouth and video rental. At one point Clerks was listed as Blockbuster’s most frequently rented and not returned video. Though Smith’s career has been up and down since then, most notably high with Dogma and low with Jersey Girl, he has remained close to his fan base, close to his New Jersey roots, and close to his characters. It is because of this and his ’sacred cow’ concerns that kept Smith from making Clerks II for 12 years. He was afraid that the further adventures of Dante and Randal wouldn’t ring true for fans of the original film. Kevin Smith needn’t have worried. He has crafted a wonderful second outing for the pair that is at times unimaginably crude, witty, and endearing.

Dante is still Dante, complaining about his lot in life though unwilling to make the effort to change the way things are. Randal is still going with the flow, following Dante to Mooby’s and living entirely in the here and now. Not much is made of it but presumably both still live at home if they are working minimum wage jobs. Their lives and their clientele, yes including Jay and Silent Bob, have relocated from the Quick Stop to the local Mooby’s fast food joint. Joining them are a few new faces that fill in the spaces of Smith’s New Jersey town admirably. Rosario Dawson is a fabulous addition to the Smith ensemble allowing Becky to project a laid back attitude that takes all of Dante and Randal’s inane lunacy and irresponsibility in stride. Another new find is Trevor Fehrman as Elias a repressed young man who seems destined to appear again in further Smith works. Elias begins as a happy-go-lucky employee of the month who has no grasp on reality and ends up taking to the depraved happenings at Mooby’s with far more ease and comfort than one would imagine. Smith even gives his wife Jennifer Schwalbach a useful and entertaining role in this film as Emma, Dante’s too-good-to-be-true fiancee.

The film does pay homage to its Kevin Smith predecessors from Jay’s Buddy Jesus tee shirt to the milk maid at the Quick Stop but they are subtle and not a barrier to the enjoyment of the plot. While Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back may have been made specifically for Kevin Smith devotees Clerks II embraces those who missed out on the first go around but want to catch these memorable characters. Here Dante and Randal have spent the past ten years in the same dead end jobs they inhabited in the first Clerks. Through an amusing opening the two end up working at the local Mooby’s, another holdover from the Kevin Smith universe of previous films. Mooby’s is filled with the sort of characters found at any fast food place in America, there are managers who never expected to find themselves stuck in the same place year after year and young drones well on their way to oblivion selling burgers to a rude and uncaring public. They while away their days discussing crucial topics like are Gobots the Kmart version of Transformers and what is the true trilogy the original Star Wars or The Lord of the Rings. Along the way Dante and Randal grow up a bit and take on some of the direction that they have been missing in their lives.

Clerks II is a satisfying addition to the Kevin Smith universe. It takes all of the familiar actors and characters, including those who have gone on to bigger and better things like Jason Lee and Ben Affleck, and weaves them into a story that surpasses the film that came before. Smith delivers a film that is funny and familiar yet crude and obnoxious. It is all the better because we have waited so long to see where these characters have gone. The time only magnifies the stasis in which the characters have lived. Dante and Randal and Smith have always been intertwined and now they move into true adulthood with their own brand of style and humor.