Clerks II

Remember Clerks (1994)? If you don't, that probably means you never saw it because you're not interested in Kevin Smith films. That's okay. If that's the case, you can probably stop reading now. Anyway..... remember Clerks? Convenience store attendants Dante and Randal annoy customers, play hockey, talk about relationships (usually in gloriously disgusting detail), generally get into trouble, and try to envision a future in which they are NOT working as clerks. Well, Dante tries to imagine it, anyway. Randal seems more or less content to peddle VHS movies and berate customers for the rest of his life.

Well, fast forward about 10 years. Guess what? Dante and Randal are still working at the Quick Stop in Jersey. But not for long. When it burns to the ground, the pair are forced to look for employment elsewhere. Hmmmm.... now where might a couple of slackers with over 10 years of experience as cashiers find a job? Oh yeah, at a fast food joint! Dante and Randal procure some gainful employment at Mooby's, a satirical MacDonald's with a touch of Disney thrown in for good measure. The fast-food chain sports a plethora of tongue-in-cheek characteristics, including the slogans "Got Meat?" and "I'm eating it," and a horrifyingly cute calf mascot.

Joining Dante and Randal in fast-food purgatory are some old faces and some new ones. Back from quasi-retirement are the ubiquitous Jay and Silent Bob. You'd think after their earth-shaking cross-country adventures in Dogma (1999) and Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back (2001) that these guys would find somewhere better to hang out than a Jersey Mooby's and something better to do than sell drugs to hoodlums. You'd think. Anyway, I digress. Gone from Clerks II (2006) are Dante's former love interests Veronica and Caitlin. One would like to assume that Veronica eventually found something better to do than hang around with a 33-year-old convenience store clerk, and that Caitlin just went flat-out insane after the trauma of fucking that old dead dude. Alas, Kevin Smith provides us with no backstory to confirm or deny these suppositions.

But fear not, the perennially ugly (and now slightly doughy) Dante has somehow managed to become engaged to the fairly attractive Emma (played by Kevin Smith's wife Jennifer Schwalbach). In fact, we soon learn that this is Dante's last day at Mooby's, as he is moving with Emma to Florida to start a new life. Never mind that he may or may not be romantically or sexually involved with his gorgeous boss Becky (Rosario Dawson). How the hell does this ugly schlup keep landing these attractive girls? Oh well, I guess I'll just chalk it up to suspension of disbelief. The cast is rounded out by the Mooby's drive-thru cashier, Elias, a 19-year-old geeky jesus-freak virgin who also might be a closet homosexual.

Okay, so this movie has been much maligned. I'm here to say that most of this criticism is unwarranted. Look, if it had been up to me, I would've left the original Clerks alone to stand as a masterpiece of low-budget indie cinema. Yes, a sequel seems a little unnecessary. But what's done is done. If you object to it that much, just don't see it and pretend it never happened. Otherwise, watch it and keep an open mind to Clerks II as its own movie. At the other end of the spectrum are those that complain that this movie doesn't live up to the legacy of Clerks. That may be so, but come on, did you really expect it to? No, this movie is not Clerks. It's different. It's shot in color, the actors are aging, and they're not at the Quick Stop anymore. But that's the whole point of the movie. We are not supposed to idolize Dante and Randal. Sure, they're intelligent geek slackers who get into crazy situations. But look deeper and you see two burn-outs who've been working the same shitty jobs in the same shitty town for over a decade of what should have been the best years of their lives! They're not cool. They're horrifying, and they portray a situation that is all too real for many people in Jersey and across the country. So everybody just needs to realize that this movie is not as "cool" as Clerks because it's not supposed to be. Because there's nothing cool about 33-year-old fast food cashiers.

But this movie is funny. There's no denying that. Kevin Smith employs the same skewed wit as with many of his other movies, and if he's prone to the occasional clunky quasi-philosophical soliloquy, I for one will forgive him. There are a few stutter-steps. Schwalbach's portrayal of Dante's fiance Emma is..... odd, to say the least. And a spontaneous 80s-style choreographed dance number falls particularly flat. But the laughs are there, coming mostly from old stand-bys like Jay and Randal, but also from the relatively unknown Trevor Fehrman as Elias the jesus geek. Possibly gay and obviously sexually repressed, Elias's naive account of his continued virginity at the hands of his girlfriend's "pussy troll" is freakin hilarious.

So, it's not Clerks, but in terms of Kevin Smith movies, it's easily in the top 3 or 4.

Plot & storyline: 7/10
Cinematography & effects: 6/10
Music & mood: 6/10
Performances: 9/10

The Reverend says: 7/10