A lot of people were surprised when it was announced that Kevin Smith would be making a sequel to his cult turned mainstream 1994 indy-icon film Clerks. Previously he had announced that 2001s Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back was going to be the last foray into his much vaunted "askewniverse" and the swan song of his reoccurring duo Jay and Bob. Personally, what I was surprised by was not that Smith went back to the well of what made him rich, but the complete ballessness shown by going back after only trying once to make a different kind of film. Okay, so 2004s Jersey Girl was an obvious swing and a miss. Thats only strike one buddy, you're gonna run back home to mommy snot nosed and teary eyed already? So, what we get as a result of Smith's cowardess is this film, one that fails to recapture the feel of the original Clerks, but instead mixes the slapstick comedy of Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back with the cliched sappiness of Jersey Girl. Yes there's a smattering of the dialogue and wit that made the original fun for so many people, but it seems to be mostly there to mask the fact that Smith is out of things to say, and has failed to develop as a filmmaker; plus there is not nearly enough of it to keep this one from going into the red.
To be fair, there are two or three sequences in this film that deliver the hilarity, and I originally walked out of the theatre thinking that they kept things from getting as awful as I feared. However, the more I thought about the rest of the movie, and how terrible a lot of it was, the more it became clear that the two or three bits of goodness were not enough to make up for the truckload of suck. I think the main malfunction of the movie is a malfunction in Smith's sense of humor. What he fails to realize is that raunchy sex humor became played out about eight years ago when it started to be included in PG-13 family films. No longer is straight faced talk about sexual irregularities jaw droppingly hysterious, its tired and lame. We all have the same access to internet porn as you do Kevin, and we all made enough sex jokes to last a lifetime by 1998 or so. Couple this with the fact that the alt 90s soundtrack feels like it would have been more appropriate ten years ago, and what it starts to look like is that you have a lame, grownup man trying to go back to making movies for high school kids because he hasn't gotten over the fact that his first "adult" movie was a failure. Perhaps a better answer would have been not to go back to the potty humor of his youth, but to instead try for another mature picture without making it so lame that it could only be enjoyed by housewives. And to top it all off, Smith went back to his original, crappy DP, instead of sticking with Vilmos Zsigmond, a legit filmmaker that made Jersey Girl at least look better than Smith's previous films. At the heart of Clerks II is a director going backwards instead of forwards, and in that respect it couldn't be anymore disappointing.
The performances are a true tale of two movies. Half of the cast does an admiral job, rising above the mediocre material, and the other half aren't trained actors at all, and look more like stand-ins reading during rehearsals than actual film actors. Couple this on screen schizophrenia with the tone of the movie going from Lucas-esque drama to cartoony humor, and I spent much of the time in the theatre just trying to get a handle on what I was watching. Smith used to be a writer and director that had a bit of subtlety, both in his drama and in his humor; but with his last few films all of that has been thrown out the window in favor of tear yanking cliches and shock jock fart effects.
As far as the performances go, I'll start by covering the good. My favorite of the film comes from Rosario Dawson, an actress I hadn't really seen much of before. She plays her character with a grounded reality thats a great help toward making the film work every time that shes on screen; and that really classes up the production. Unfortunately, she has to carry many of the overly dramatic scenes one on one with an amateur actor, and doesn't have nearly atlas-like enough shoulders to carry the load. This is the first time I've seen Trevor Fehrman, and he does a great job playing Elias, an overly sheltered and religious character that bounces well off the cynical Randall. Despite the fact that Elias is too over the top a character to be treated with any sort of realism, Fehrman manages to keep his cartoony antics amusing, and his monologue about the devious "pillowpants" is one of the truly great comedy pieces that this film produces. The third performance that I enjoyed came from Jeff Anderson. Despite the fact that he's one of Smiths original players, and not really a pro when it comes to the Hollywood scene, he has a great sense of comedic timing and is able to pull his own weight handily. In addition to this, he does a good job with a dramatic monologue near the end of the film, playing it with the subtlety that the rest of the film lacks. Really, its a shame that this guy hasn't got more work over the past decade.
Brian O'Halloran and Jennifer Schwalbach are a different story altogether. They turn in two of the most unbelievably amateur performances I've ever seen in a mainstream film as Mr. and Mrs. Dante Hicks. Really, they're that terrible. O'Halloran was acceptable in the first Clerks, as he was surrounded by similarly amateur performers in an under funded independent production. But here, when trading dialogue with the capable Dawson, he is exposed as being severely out of his element. And though it may be more the fault of the script than O'Halloran himself, Dante is presented as much more of a one note paranoid/conflicted caricature than he is in the first where he felt like, you know, a human being. Plus, there is something seriously wrong with the way he looks. I can understand not aging well, but this dude is just creepy looking with pasty, overly made up skin and ridiculous dyed hair. He looks more like the lead in a Weekend at Bernies sequel than a thirtysomething clerk. It's really distracting. And speaking of distracting, I defy anyone to not be distracted any moment that Jennifer Schwalbach is on screen robotically droning Smith's rapid fire dialogue with all the life in her eyes of a Hall of Presidents animatronic. She was distracting in Strike Back when her weirdly wrinkled/stretched out form was pared with two nubile young starlets as a trio of sexy dames, and she's distracting here as the non acting fiance of Dante that everyone keeps telling us is so attractive. Okay, so its no secret to me that she is Smith's real life wife, but even if I didn't know that, I contend that it would still be painfully obvious to me that she has no place in movies. I'm glad that you're in love with your wife Kev, and I'm glad that you think that she's hot; but she's not TV hot, not even close, and she's sure as hell not leading lady hot. Quit putting her in your films before you look even more like an 80s era Paul McCartney.
Oh, and Jay and Bob don't really do much of note. I guess the image of a naked Mewes with his genitals tucked back behind his legs is funny for one viewing, but other than that they're kind of just there as part of the background set.
So, in summation, Clerks II had a couple of really funny parts and a couple of good performances that made me want to like it; but ultimately it feels dated, has some ham handed drama, and feels like another step backward for Smith, who has cemented his position completely off the radar of filmmakers to watch.
