I went to see Clerks: II tonight.
I was fairly nervous going into it. After Jersey Girl and the farewell of Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back, I was not sure what to expect. Hearing about Joel Siegel walking out after forty minutes did raise my hopes quite drastically. I felt like I was visiting old friends from college that I had not spoken to since then. I had the same questions in my mind (that is so pathetic, actually). Have they changed? Do they still have “it” twelve years later? Do I want to see “it” now that I am twelve years older? I am very happy to say “Yes” to all of the above.
Don't worry — there will be no “spoilers” in this review. Most of the joy from a movie like this is not knowing from where the next joke will come. I will say that those who love Kevin Smith’s ability to write dialogue and set up a good fart or d*ck joke will not be disappointed with this, but there is much more to it than d*ck and fart jokes. I actually cannot think of any real fart jokes — was that a spoiler? I‘ll be more careful.
The plot is simple and the ending is predictable, but who cares in a movie like this? It is the journey, not the destination. Basically, Dante is moving to Florida with his fiancée and the movie follows his last day at Mooby’s, a fast food restaurant he and Randal now find themselves working at. That is about it for the plot. Really.
Kevin Smith has definitely matured as a film maker since the first Clerks. The first thing I noticed was that the camera actually moves in this film. He has left the steady-cam shots of his previous films and realized a camera can move to create mood and he uses it well. His jokes and characters are now so well written that Jay and Silent Bob are no longer required to liven up a scene, although they do still do that quite nicely. Now, their characters are like the intermission between scenes, giving the cast time to change locations: the Rosencrantz and Guildenstern of the “Jersey Trilogy” now in its sixth movie. Kind of like another famous trilogy, right?
Article comments
1 - Victor Plenty
Caught a few minutes of Jay and Silent Bob on TV the other night, on some network that simply blanks out the profanities instead of using bleeps or whatever.
At times it sounded as if the audio track was almost completely gone, because the only surviving words were minor ones like "the" and "dude."
Puritanical pressure groups will need to start hiring lip-readers if they want to keep taking offense at these movies.
2 - kanrei
I think they already have. They are going after live events I heard. Like football players and things like that.
3 - TY
I thought the movie was good, but I had an issue with Emma Bunting.
She should NOT have been played by Jennifer Schwalbach, who conveniently dropped the "-Smith" we saw in her credit for Jay & Silent Bob Strikes Back.
She is cute, but in the movie she looked god-awful, and not believable as Dante's early 30's fiance. She should have been someone who isn't Mrs. Kevin Smith AND a "name." It probably would have helped box office numbers.
M. Night showed his ego by making himself a bigger role in Lady in the Water, and Kevin Smith showed HIS ego by casting his wife in Clerks II.
4 - Boxclocke
#1 - I think I should mention that the FCC's most recent directive to television networks included this statement:
"if the F-word or the S-word were uttered to camera so that viewers could recognize it from the speaker's mouth, the lips must be pixelated."
Read my lips: fucking shitbags.