Clerks 2
Jake and I went to see Clerks 2 tonight. I’ve been looking forward to this movie for quite a while. Kevin Smith is one of my all-time favorite directors and I was anxious for it to come out.
The reviews on it have been really positive and it received an 8-minute standing ovation at Cannes, but it isn’t going to break any box-office records.
As far as the movie goes, it was pretty much what I expected. It was pretty over-the-top offensive, but it was in a wink-wink, nudge-nudge kind of way. Smith canonizes his uber-slackers Dante and Randal who have moved on from the Quick Stop to a Mooby’s managed by the new-to-the-Askewniverse Rosario Dawson. Dante is about to leave the Garden State for Florida to get married to his fiancee (played very well by Smith’s wife, Jennifer). Randal is up to his old antics and Jay and Silent Bob have moved from the Quick Stop to outside the Mooby’s. They provide some great physical comic relief in between Randal’s biting diatribes and Dante’s constant complaining.
Although in old age, the clerks have aged a little, they haven’t lost their edge. While Clerks 2 certainly has a lot more flash (and color!) than the original, it still manages to maintain its likability as a small indie flick. You have to appreciate people like the Weinsteins who give filmmakers like Smith millions of dollars and says, “make the movie that you want” which is exactly what Smith did.
One of the things I really liked about this movie was the new additions to the cast, Dawson as Becky and Trevor Fuhrman as Elias. Dawson seems completely at ease in Dante and Randal’s raunchy world, participating in their conversations. Fuhrman plays Elias, the ultra-Christian, Lord-of-the-Rings-loving co-worker who takes a lot of Randal’s verbal abuse. He’s really funny.
Overall, the movie is a statement about accepting your true self, no matter what that might be. I enjoyed it a lot…better than the first one, but I think that’s because it makes more sense to me these days and I can relate to characters who are searching for some greater purpose. For that, I give it two thumbs up with the disclaimer that you realize before seeing it that the language and content are more colorful than most movies. Just keep that in mind before seeing it.
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