Clerks II
Movie: Clerks II (2006)
Watched with: My mom
For a long time, I was convinced this was going to suck, but it's pretty much funny from the opening shot. After a little bit of set-up (the Quick Stop has burned up and Dante and Randall resort to jobs at the Mooby's restaurant from Dogma and Jay & Silent Bob), the film quickly falls into the kind of customer-antagonization and nerd debates in a pitch-perfect redux of the original Clerks.
Things are mixed up somewhat by the additions of 19-year-old Jesus nerd Elias and babely manager...um...Rosario Dawson, as well as a somewhat focused plot abou the love triangle between Rosario, Dante and his fiancee...um...Kevin Smith's wife. But these changes mostly just keep things fresh, and it remarkably manages to capture the Clerks feel impeccably.
Visually, the movie looks a fair amount like Chasing Amy, which I think is easily the most visually attractive of Smith's films. It never looks glitzy and "Hollywood" (a significant problem with Jersey Girl), but it does look professional and attractive.
Basically everything Jay & Silent Bob Strike Back did wrong, Clerks II does right--there's enough references to the other movies (most notably Clerks, naturally) to maintain continuity and throw in some extra laughs for fans, but it never descends into an awful string of injokes. I didn't really like Ben Affleck's cameo (is he supposed to be Holden from Chasing Amy or is the 'View Askewniverse' burdened with yet another Affleck?) or that you can see Spanish tile roofs in one scene (revealing that much of the movie was shot in fucking Buena Park, not Jersey), and the list of people who friended Kevin Smith on myspace at the end is pretty pathetic, but all those are trivial complaints about what is all around a good time.
Kevin Smith's filmmaking ranges from dick and weed jokes to smart satire to unapologetic sentimentality, and he's had some successes and failures at each. Clerks II handles them all deftly, and while it's not as memorable as, say, Dogma, I think it's actually more solid.
There's a significant way in which this is be his best movie.
Watched with: My mom
For a long time, I was convinced this was going to suck, but it's pretty much funny from the opening shot. After a little bit of set-up (the Quick Stop has burned up and Dante and Randall resort to jobs at the Mooby's restaurant from Dogma and Jay & Silent Bob), the film quickly falls into the kind of customer-antagonization and nerd debates in a pitch-perfect redux of the original Clerks.
Things are mixed up somewhat by the additions of 19-year-old Jesus nerd Elias and babely manager...um...Rosario Dawson, as well as a somewhat focused plot abou the love triangle between Rosario, Dante and his fiancee...um...Kevin Smith's wife. But these changes mostly just keep things fresh, and it remarkably manages to capture the Clerks feel impeccably.
Visually, the movie looks a fair amount like Chasing Amy, which I think is easily the most visually attractive of Smith's films. It never looks glitzy and "Hollywood" (a significant problem with Jersey Girl), but it does look professional and attractive.
Basically everything Jay & Silent Bob Strike Back did wrong, Clerks II does right--there's enough references to the other movies (most notably Clerks, naturally) to maintain continuity and throw in some extra laughs for fans, but it never descends into an awful string of injokes. I didn't really like Ben Affleck's cameo (is he supposed to be Holden from Chasing Amy or is the 'View Askewniverse' burdened with yet another Affleck?) or that you can see Spanish tile roofs in one scene (revealing that much of the movie was shot in fucking Buena Park, not Jersey), and the list of people who friended Kevin Smith on myspace at the end is pretty pathetic, but all those are trivial complaints about what is all around a good time.
Kevin Smith's filmmaking ranges from dick and weed jokes to smart satire to unapologetic sentimentality, and he's had some successes and failures at each. Clerks II handles them all deftly, and while it's not as memorable as, say, Dogma, I think it's actually more solid.
There's a significant way in which this is be his best movie.
posted by Kane Lynch at
9:44 PM
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