You Guys Wanna Go See a Shitty Movie?

Clerks II sucked. That's the thrust of this blog entry in a nutshell.

I admit that I may be a little biased on this, given my personal belief that Kevin Smith hasn't made a decent movie since Chasing Amy; but, in my own defense, I went into it with an open mind. In fact, I went into it expecting something like the first Clerks movie: a movie that was good for what it was. It didn't have to be a cinematic masterpiece. It didn't have to alter my perception of the universe. Just some good, old-fashioned, lowbrow junkfood for the brain, that's all I was asking...Maybe that was asking too much.

Picture this. You're Kevin Smith. Your films and creativity have been on a downward slope for about 7 years or so. With Dogma you tried to tackle spiritual issues and found yourself in way over your head (who could honestly watch the ending of that movie and think anything besides, "Wow, this is really fucking stupid"?) Then came Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back, a movie that was supposed to be an "in-joke" between you and your fans, but instead came off like something a bunch of annoying pothead teenagers would put together if they had the money. And finally there was Jersey Girl, the sappy "I just got married and became a father" movie starring Ben Affleck alongside some precocious little girl...In the words of Keith Sisson, "Man! I can't WAIT to not go see that!" Three successive failures. Absolutely no growth in your filmmaking abilities or subject material. Artistically speaking, you have accomplished nothing. So what do you do? You go back to the beginning and remind people that, once upon a time, you made a pretty good movie.

Clerks, man. That's one of those movies that every teenage fan of indie/weird cinema absolutely worshipped back in the 90s. I remember the first time I saw it, how I marvelled at the simplicity of it all. It was so cool to think that some guy - Kevin Smith - had gotten together with a bunch of his friends and made a movie about how much it sucks to work with the public: Annoying customers. Stupid questions. Being called in on your day off. It was all there - pure, plain, and simple. Throw in a few mock-intelligent conversations about Star Wars and relationships and we had all the makings of an auteur. Kevin Smith had style and flair, and, in my opinion, could easily have become the New Jersey version of Woody Allen.

Ten years later, we have Clerks II. Most of the old characters have returned, only now they seem - dare I say it? - a little too old to be where they are. The way I see it, a guy in his early-to-mid-20s hates his job and customers, and it's relatable. Once he's a full-blown adult, though, it starts to seem sad and clinically dysfunctional.

In Clerks, the characters of Jay and Silent Bob were raw and believable - the kinds of guys you'd expect to see standing around outside a convenience store all day. In the new movie, they've been drastically reduced to self-parody. A perfect example: in the first movie, Jay starts to say a line and then stops halfway through it and says, "Wait, I fucked up"...It was so perfectly executed that I took it for a genuine dialogue mistake that had been left in the movie. (Because movies are entirely staged, the only things that seem real are the mistakes.) Only later did I learn that that was in the script. In the new movie, everything is really obviously staged. The characters and situations are so over-the-top whacky that they don't seem real at all. There's even a big, unnecessary lip-sync-and-dance sequence right in the middle of the movie - the kind of thing that used to seem really funny when Matt, Mike, Daniel, and I were 15*. Gone are the strange little side characters like Snowball and Cousin Olaf (Kevin Smith managed to make a nod towards just about everything in the first movie except "Berserker".) Gone are the wordy, pseudo-psychological conversations about the events of the day. Put simply, the whole thing is very desperate and very empty (with the noteworthy exception of Randall describing the Lord of the Rings trilogy.)

I guess it's true what they say. For most artists, the early work is the good stuff. It's raw and full of passion and genuine self-expression. After that, they get older and domesticated and start taming their passions. Before long, they're producing mediocre crap and gratuitous sequels. Like a boxer past his prime, they just don't know when to throw in the towel. And so, a note to creative people everywhere: when the only material you've got left is a re-hash of the stuff you did a decade ago, it might be time to pass the torch to a new generation. That's my two cents.

Thanks for the memories, Mr.Smith. But please, don't make a Clerks 3.


* See also "J singing 'How Am I Supposed to Live Without You?'", "Matt singing 'I'm Free'", "Mike screaming along to Reverend", and "Daniel singing 'Amish Paradise'"...we were predecessors to the whole "Numa Numa" thing.