Clerks 2
I like Kevin Smith for what he is. He’s a guy that makes films for himself, his buddies, and the millions of predominately young nerdy guys out there that just happen to also love his slacker stoner offensive brand of humour. His films, for the most part, are visually uninspired – in academic circles it would be paying the man a massive compliment just to call his style of direction ‘competent’ – and apart from the odd foray into light more family friendly romantic comedy (Jersey Girl) and an interesting (but still laden with toilet humour and profanities) musing on his faith (Dogma), he has been more than content to make the same kind of films with the same characters for his entire career.
But he knows all of this. Fuck – he’s positively fucking proud of it!
He is a geek made good – if he wasn’t the one making these films he’d be just like any one of his fans lining up to see them the day they come out. And is returning to the same stomping ground again and again really such a sin when his rabid fan-base will eat up anything he does with stoner heroes Jay and Silent Bob, some witty Star Wars diatribes, smorgasbord of crude sex gags, and more swearing than a Scorsese gangster flick?
The answer is no – unless he tries to prove something to his critics and inject a bit of substance into his movies and also balance his trademark crudeness out with sappy sentimentalism and a bizarrely camp and zany dance number – all of which he does in Clerks 2.
Kevin Smith has a family now. We know this because his wife and daughter keep popping up in his movies, but even if he didn’t go for such casting nepotism, you’d still be able to guess because it has so obviously changed him, and subsequently changed his movies. Sure he still throws in dirty sex slang and Star Wars speeches – he has bills to pay after all and that’s what his fans want – but this now just seems like but a cover for blunt and drawn-out messages of family, friendship and growing up. And then – just if you were thinking he had gone too soft, he throws in a donkey-sex climax scene, just to reassure you that you’re getting some vintage Kevin Smith for your hard earned.
Dante has never been a funny character – in the first Clerks it is only his constant whinging and suffering that makes him endearing, but it was always Randall’s verbose lashings that we laughed at. Here Dante – again as the Smith proxy – is sucked of any funny altogether and really does nothing but have deep and meaningful talks with his fiancé, the manager he has been having a fling with, and even with Randall. And they’re all dead boring. Every time Dante is on screen you can go to the toilet, make yourself a sandwich, pop outside for a smoke. You won’t miss a thing.
Also, everybody seems to have all of a sudden become a frickin’ Christian – like Smith is. Not sure what exactly he is trying to say about the faith by having the pussy-loving drug dealer Jay, adulterer Dante, and new character sexually repressed geek virgin Elias all be God-fearing folk other than to say that the qualification for being a Christian is broader to Smith than some clergy would probably desire.
Hardcore Smith fans will still lap this all up of course, even if they are busy taking hits from their bongs during the downtime moments waiting for the next Jay & Silent Bob gag, and for the rest of us there are some chuckle-worthy moments sprinkled throughout the film but most of them feel so forced, like they’re desperately trying to recreate the magic of the original. Randall’s assassination of the Lord of The Rings films may be spot on the money, but feels like it’s just an update on one of his other rants – like it’s only in here to recognise the recent pop-culture history that has passed since the last time we met these guys. The call-backs to the first Clerks are all a nice touch and handled well – but only serve to remind you how edgy and raw Smith’s comedy once was, and that by trying to replicate that time and time again he has diluted his winning formula, making the move to come crawling back to the film that made his career after the critical and commercial slaughtering of Jersey Girl perhaps an all too transparent one.