SCREEN SCENE: "Clerks II"

"Clerks II" MGM Director: Kevin Smith

Few directors are as popular among the college crowd as Kevin
Smith. His movies appeal to twenty-something guys the same way that
"Gilmore Girls" appeals to high school girls: The bubble they take
place in is a male geek wet dream, in which everyone talks the way
we’d all like to if we were wittier, members of the opposite sex
act pretty much exactly how we would want them to, and the topics
of the day almost always hover around those two issues so vitally
important to young people – relationships and pop culture. The two
visions are unsurprisingly polar opposites – Smith’s urban
working-class crudity comes from somewhere completely alien to the
small-town quirkiness of "Girls" – but "Clerks II" is as close to a
television episode as any of his films have been. As such, the
success of its character-based humor above all the film’s other
elements makes it the perfect encapsulation of Smith’s filmmaking
strengths and weaknesses. What works best about "Clerks II," and
its main draw, is the simple pleasure of watching these characters
again. Smith has returned to this universe in multiple other works
since 1994’s "Clerks," which first introduced foul-mouthed clerks
Dante and Randal along with the now-iconic comedy duo Jay and
Silent Bob. The setup this time is that Dante and Randal are now
working in a fast food restaurant instead of their old convenience
store, and that Dante plans to leave New Jersey for Florida with
his fiancee Emma. We watch for reasons similar to watching a good
sitcom – not because of the rudimentary plot line, but because of
the characters’ refreshing chemistry and often hilarious
interactions. They don’t disappoint, offering up several funny
conversations covering familiarly off-the-wall territory such as
the "Lord of the Rings" trilogy, various sexual acts and racist
terminology. The movie gets bogged down, however, by the clumsy
handling of its narrative. As the film wears on, Smith spends more
and more time trying to lend emotional weight to Dante’s mixed
feelings about leaving – his ties to best friend Randal, his
romantic entanglement with his boss Becky (Rosario Dawson, easily
the best performer here), and his fondness for his job – and the
lack of subtlety results in everything being over-explained, as
well as some cringe-worthy dialogue. In the middle of the film,
Dante and Randal’s shift to flipping burgers has reached a
particularly frustrating point, and the two leave their post to go
ride go-karts. It’s a great little moment, both celebratory and
sympathetic without pushing too far into sentiment. Unfortunately,
the buzz gets killed in the very next scene, in which the two
discuss what, exactly, go-kart riding just meant to them, and
express their frustrations with their place in society – in other
words, a voicing out of everything already conveyed in prior
scenes. Like all of "Clerks II," it’s a microcosm of Smith’s
filmmaking, his considerable talents compromised yet again by his
struggles in constructing a narrative.