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Underground > Film, TV & Theatre >

Clerks 2

Tuna Ghost: Pratt knot hero

04:09 / 13.02.06

I had heard about this but didn't believe it.

Behold

Article

From that article

The movie itself is kind of a look at what happens when the angry young man enters his thirties. The movie is primarily set in a fast-food joint, but it has so little to do with working in a fast-food joint."

"Brian O'Halloran and Jeff Anderson, who played Dante and Randall in 'Clerks,' are back and Jason Mewes and I play Jay and Silent Bob," Smith continued. "Ben Affleck showed up for a day. Jason Lee came in for a day. Wanda Sykes came in for a day. There's a guy named Earthquake, this really funny comedian, and Kevin Wiseman, who plays Marshall on 'Alias,' he came in."

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Although some vocal fans and film purists have expressed their displeasure with the revisiting of, arguably, a classic, Smith insists that by moving Dante and Randal to the fast-food industry, he simultaneously moved his own game to the next level.

"It's my favorite of all the movies I've ever done," Smith said of the sequel. "It used to be that 'Chasing Amy' was my favorite, but this has supplanted 'Chasing Amy.' 'Clerks' was what it felt like to be in my twenties, but 'Clerks 2' is what it feels like to be in my thirties. A portrait of that. It's about how people have to struggle to grow out of a role that they've filled for the better part of their adult life. It's really poignant, but it's insanely funny."

I'd like this to be good. I want Kevin Smith to succeed with this. I want him to impress me.

I've decided I'm going to give him a chance. I'm going to spend eight dollars to see this when it comes out.

14:09 / 13.02.06

subtitle: PASSION OF THE CLERKS

Saw the trailer, looks like it could be amusing.

Tuna Ghost: Pratt knot hero

18:44 / 13.02.06

It does, but I've been fooled before.

Clerks is, in my own humble opinion, Smith's best movie. He's on dangerous ground here. His image as a filmmaker (in my eyes) hangs in the balance. Either I'll like him again or he'll be cast down into the pit. C'mon, Smith! Prove to me you aren't just whoring out your best characters. Tell me this will be better than the animated series.

00:56 / 14.02.06

Yeah, I agree -- this is pretty much make or break time for Smith as a filmmaker. If it succeeds, he shows that he hasn't totally squandered his early potential; if he fails, he's got The Surreal Life to look forward to, and probably not too much else. I'm not sure which to expect, or even which to hope for.

Tuna Ghost: Pratt knot hero

23:22 / 26.07.06

Went to go see this last night, and was forced to sit relatively close to the front of the theater, and let me say right now that that is as close to Brian O'Halloran's face as I ever want to be. I kept wanting to ask the camera person to back the eff up.

Also: if someone had told me that Kevin Smith would be adressing the sensitive issue of race and what constitutes racials slurs "in his own style", I would have been much more wary in approaching the movie. The scene was sort of painful to watch.

But aside from being all up in O'Halloran's face and a few crappy spots, I would say that I enjoyed most of the movie. A few good lines and fun jokes. I was a little confused about the ending: in several interviews, Smith claimed the movie would be about growing up, moving on and the changes people go through doing those things. But the end

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just seemed to reinforce the idea that the past was better; why move on? Dante and Randall buy the Quick Stop and the final scene fades back into black and white, as if to say "remember back when Kevin Smith made good movies?"

I think I need to see it again. I know I liked parts of it, but I don't know if I would recommend it to anyone.

Something fun from the Onion:

Kali, Queen of Kitteh

13:25 / 27.07.06

I'm hoping I'll enjoy this, too, as the Favorite Scientologist and I are going to shell out money for it this weekend.

Again, I like Kevin Smith films so I don't think I'll be too disappointed.

14:34 / 27.07.06

I enjoyed it. There was some real growth in Kevin Smith's directing. Stylistically, at least, if not in subject. For the first time in one of his movies, I felt we were shown things instead of just being told them, and a big part of this was the music.

Where the music selection in the earlier movies all seemed to be primarily motivated by having a soundtrack tie-in with contemporary marketable bands, Smith picked the music a bit more deliberately in this one. Talking Heads started things off nicely, the "Raindrops Keep Fallin' On My Head" scene actually explained to me why Dante and Randal are friends, and I thought the "ABC" sequence was fantastic. Even that Smashing Pumpkins song worked, because I thought "Well, this is the kind of music Dante would set his emotional dilemma to."

Anyway, I thought it was kind of a clever trick Smith pulled, trying new things with his filmmaking, but keeping it in the familiar milieu of Clerks so that he didn't get too lost. Teaching an old dog new tricks.

Also, the Christian Transformers fan was winning, and except for the "Pillowpants" bit, none of it was too over the top.

And Randal gets points for explaining to me why I didn't like Lord of the Rings.

01:37 / 28.07.06

The New Yorker has nothing nice to say about this, and specifically mentions that it's a two-hour tribute to Kevin Smith's Chrisianity. I'm begging you, tell me it isn't true. I'm not afraid to admit that I've enjoyed his movies, even Jay and Silent Bob, but I'm pretty sure I can't sit through Smith using my fondness for clerks as a pulpit.

13:26 / 28.07.06

Well, if you're looking for it...Dante wears and displays prominently a big cross (but around his neck) and he's 33 years old and the movie was originally to be called "Passion of the Clerks"...and there's a Bible passage on a prison wall...but more than that, I think they're reaching. Did they give any specific examples? If "Clerks 2 is a tribute to Christianity" is your thesis, you might be able to find stuff to back it up (there's, um, forgiveness in it?), but on first viewing, any "tribute" seemed superficial at best. I'll admit I was not looking for subtext in Clerks 2, though...

Oh, Jay becomes a born-again (unless this is not the right Christian term I'm looking for), but it's a joke, really. And they imply that a kid raised in a very religious environment might be seriously stunted when it comes to notions about sex, so whatever religious content may or may not be in there, it's not quite "Catholicism -- Rah Rah Rah"

Tuna Ghost: Pratt knot hero

18:21 / 28.07.06

Agreed--it's a pretty big stretch to call it a "tribute". I hadn't picked up on any overtly "christian" themes, aside from Jay having become a born again, which I think may have actually happened to Jason Mewes in rehab (but don't quote me on that). The scene where this is brought up, though, is a jokey scene.

Weed Customer (played by Ethan Suplee): "Is that a fuckin' bible?"

Jay: "HEY! It's the HOLY fuckin' Bible."

And yes, Dante's cross is visible throughout most of the movie, and yes, the jail cell does have a biblical quote on the wall, and...you know what? I'm just going to repeat everything John Octave just said.

The more I look back on this movie the more I like it. Although I didn't have much to say for it immediately after seeing it though, so it pretty much had nowhere to go but up.

gillotteelectric

01:15 / 29.07.06

I really like Clerks 2... I Loved the ABC dance number a ton!

To call a movie with a 3 minute section on ass to mouth and donkey fucking a tribute to chirstianity is a pretty far fucking stretch if you ask me.

I enjoyed that the burger chain is the same one that the angels in Dogma take issue with.

02:29 / 05.01.07

I hated this. I went in with low expectations and even those weren't met.

Despite having many times the budget of the original, it kinda took it nowhere. Which may have been, like, the point of story - but it was just tedious.

The LotR piss-take was fantastic. But the donkey buggery, the ABC dance sequence - why???

The original is one of my favorite films and KS just jacks off all over its steaming corpse.

02:43 / 05.01.07

I thought it was pretty good. Kevin Smith is getting sentimental in his old age.

03:35 / 05.01.07

He, Kevin Smith, still ought to be shot though, shouldn't he?

At least the only argument I can see against that is that being shot takes not much time, whereas Kevin Smith's films go on for, God ... so very much longer.

And he, Kevin, knows precisely nothing much about the human heart. He doesn't even seem to have a basic grasp of the human penis ... It's the stomach that he understands.

Only the stomach.

Jack The Bodiless

08:35 / 05.01.07

He knows about as much as most about the human heart. Just not as much as most surgeons.

15:09 / 05.01.07

I liked it. It was exactly what I was expecting. Sure, it's a very safe movie for Smith, but I liked it. Funny, and surprisingly touching at the end with the two clerks realizing they're meant for each other.

Solitaire Rose as Tom Servo

03:22 / 06.01.07

I liked it as well, but I like Smith's take on people and how they talk. I guess if you and your friends talk like these characters, you'll like the movie. But to say that it is a movie about being a Christian is a lot like saying Animal House is a meditation on class warfare. It might be, but I didn't notice under all the jokes.

06:17 / 07.01.07

Alex > Stomach? Closer to the colon I thought...

08:38 / 07.01.07

"He doesn't even seem to have a basic grasp of the human penis"...

Must... resist... urge... to... Barbequote...

09:03 / 09.01.07

I liked parts of it, but only in a 3 stars kinda way. Some of the dialogue seemed quite forced. I also felt the theme of importance of male friendship had been addressed in Smith's previous films (Chasing Amy).

I also felt that Rosario Dawson's pregnancy was this massive plot device to make the audience more accepting of Dante's choice. If you look resistantly at this film, what is wrong with Dante's fiance? Smith really didn't sell me on her being over-controlling. I get that's what he was going for, but for me it just didn't get there.

At the end of the movie, they call back to Clerks 1, with the lady sifting through the milk in the QuickStop fridge. It just made me feel that Clerks had so many more layers of humour, and that there was nothing that subtle within C2 at all.

This was better than I expected, but Smith really needs to start from scratch and leave these folks behind. (and also - the introductions to the movie on the dvd was painful - really bad.)