Finding
the right approach for this review is the most difficult writing tasks I've been
faced with for some time. I saw Clerks 2 not more than 20 minutes after taking
in a screening of Ali G's riotously hilarious new film Borat – a movie that
made me laugh so hard and often that I suspect I may have ruptured a moderately
vital internal organ, perhaps one of my kidneys. When a comedy causes you to have
blood in your stool, perhaps the MPAA needs to create a new rating of some kind
(PB-13) Everyone strongly cautioned this film may cause you to piss blood for
13 days.
The
reason for this somewhat distasteful digression is that by the time the opening
titles began to appear for Clerks 2, I honestly wasn't sure I was capable of any
further laughter that night. In retrospect I might have been better off to have
waited, but screw it, I got in free and I really wanted to see it – I was
a huge fan of the original and have been a great fan of Kevin Smith. Yes I liked
Mallrats (if nothing else it introduced the world to Jason Lee) in fact the only
film that he's has made that I didn't particularly care for was Jay and Silent
Bob Strike Back. Nevertheless, anyone who doesn't admire Smith's insightful wit,
his gift for dialogue and beneath it all his big heart are fools who should, at
the very least, have their car towed away to an undisclosed location each time
they go to the movies. That way instead of polluting out good breathable air with
their inane opinions, they can spend the rest of the night trying to find their
car.
Clerks 2
picks up with the cast of characters Smith introduced us to lo these many years
ago 10 years later. We pick up the thread several months after The Quick Stop
has been destroyed by fire, to find Dante (Brian O'Halloran) and Randal (Jeff
Anderson) working at a fast food establishment known as Mooby's. (Being a west
coast rapper, I don't know if Mooby's is real or fictitious but it bears a resemblance
to McDonald's) the two chief newcomers to the Smith fold are Rosario Dawson as
Becky the restaurant's manager, and Trevor Fehrman as Elias a cute and happy-go-loopy
nebbish whose virginity, sci-fi-love and mama's boy Christian background make
him the perfect foil for Randal's relentless badinage. Both proved to be perfect
fits, particularly Dawson who folds into mix without the slightest misstep. Her
playfully intimate scenes with O'Halloran, did much to elevate his game. O'Halloran
really delivers a nice performance in this film, and one would certainly hope
that he might parlay it into the kind of substantial career that many of Smith's
disciples have enjoyed.
The
same can certainly be said of Jeff Anderson, who virtually vanished from existence
after the first Clerks which I always thought was quite odd as he was clearly
the star of the film. It seems like I remember reading about Anderson having a
falling out with Smith, which may or may not have any basis in truth, but would
certainly explain why he didn't appear in any of Smith's subsequent films until
his role as the gun salesman in "Dogma." In "2" Anderson hits
the ground running as the beloved Randal the rapid fire, voice of brutal candor,
and with 10 years of age on his face his resemblance to James Woods is all the
more pronounced. He also shares Woods knack for deadpan timing.
I
would suppose that this film won't be treated terribly well by the critics, though
Smith is known for talky films, there are a few scenes where he tries your patience
with excess exposition and at times the film feels at tad lifeless and labored,
like it was all taking place in a vacuum, and though these are slightly more than
minor quibbles, I'd have to say that the film contains some of Smith's best comic
writing. Even though my laffer was sore, I still laughed one hell of a lot. Next
to the original I would rank this one as his second funniest film, although the
best still belongs to Chasing Amy. Speaking of which Ben Affleck makes a walk-on,
walk-off cameo and Jason Lee actually plays a fairly pivotal role as Lance Dodds,
a former schoolmate who's made a killing on the internet and likes to come in
and rub Dante and Randal's nose in the fact that they're working in fast food
in their thirties. Unfortunately Smith only uses Lee as a plot device to bring
about Randal's existential panic attack, I would have preferred to see a little
more humanity injected into Lee's Lance, but then again he's only on screen for
less than two minutes.
Certainly
a huge saving grace of "2" is that it offers a lot more Jay and Silent
Bob. Mewes makes the most of his screen time, his Buffalo Bill bits are seriously
hysterical, and as always Silent Bob gets by with his use off his expressive eyebrows.
As for the donkey show, I'd say it neither hurts nor helps the film. There is
an unexpected twist that makes it funny enough at times to work, but it also felt
like something Smith tacked on to ratchet up the shock-factor. We are certainly
getting hard to shock. In the span of 4 hours I saw Borat, Clerks 2 and Descent.
Between Borat and Clerks 2 there isn't an identifiable shred of political correctness
left, they literally obliterate it in ways that are both inspired and absolutely
hilarious. Then comes Descent to finish me off altogether.
To
sum up, Clerks 2 isn't a bulletproof film, my biggest gripe has to be the sentimentality
that gets mixed in toward the end. It just was all wrong to go from donkey dicks
to a bid for tears. Mixing comedy and heart is something Smith proved he could
do in Jersey Girl (a film that was unfairly criticized) but to try to add heart
into the Clerks mix was a mistake. The original was a straight up raunchy comedy,
and it will always remain one of my all time favorite films. True there was a
love story of sorts at the heart of "2" but there's nothing I can tell
you about it that wouldn't be a spoiler, besides the sentimentality that I found
inconsistent with the film's tone had nothing to do with the love story. But that's
enough inane knit-picking, I view Smith's films the way I view Beatle albums.
Sure there's going to be a few songs that you're not crazy about, but come on
– it's a Beatles album.
