1994's Clerks is one of my favorite movies of all time, and probably my favorite comedy of all time. Entirely shot in black and white, the film conveys extremely graphic vulgarity, but has a charm and underlining message that makes it unbearable to hate on, unless you're a crotchfunk. Kevin Smith's direction was cheap, probably because it was his first film and he didn't have a lot of money going in, but his portrayal of Silent Bob became legendary when he spoke the truth in one of the truest lines in cinema history when he said: "You know, there's a million fine looking women in the world, dude. But they don't all bring you lasagna at work. Most of 'em just cheat on you."

Well we waited, and waited, and waited, and sat through the uber-funny Mallrats, the engaging Chasing Amy, the articulate Dogma, the penis-joke filled Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back, and the overly hated on Jersey Girl, we finally got what we were waiting for. The complete on-screen return of Dante and Randall with Clerks II. I went to go see it on opening night, and I've learned three important things:

1. Kevin Smith's still got "IT"
2. Rosario Dawson is my dream girl
3. You can get away with anything and still get an R Rating.


Just because they serve you, doesn't mean they like you

Clerks II is funny, not as funny as the first one, but still hilarious. But that's not really what makes it so great, it's the fact that beneath the sexual and racial jokes, Clerks II is a truly heart-wrenching, emotional story of a few people living their lives with minor and major problems on their hands, and finding solice in doing bad things, such as sex in the kitchen on top of a prep table, poking fun at customers, or beastiality. Ok, so maybe the beastiality doesn't equate to heartwarming, but the rest of them are just as human as it gets. Besides the first Clerks, this is probably the most human of Kevin Smith's comedies, even though they all are.

Basically, 10 years have passed since the first adventure. The film begins with a flashback to the last day that Dante Hicks (Brian O'Halloran) worked at the Quik Stop, in which he discovered it was on fire. We get our first view of what the film has in store when his lazy-ass bestfriend and long-time co-worker Randall (Jeff Anderson) shows up, assumes it was terrorists, but then proclaims "I left the coffee pot on again huh?". Randall Graves is the film version of me. Hands Down. Every single thing that Randall does, everything he says, and every decision that he makes is exactly what I would do in the situation, ask any of my friends. Anyways, they head to work at Mooby's, a fictional burger joint which takes a little bit from all of the real burger joints. This is where hilarity insues.

We're introduced to Elias (Trevor Fehrman) after a long argument with Randall about the coolness of transformers. This is just one of the many nerdy and geeky arguments in the film, much like the Death Star Carpenter discussion from the first Clerks. The battle between Lord of the Rings and Star Wars continues in what has to be a hilarious moment for fans of both series, because dammit, its true. I love Star Wars AND Lord of the Rings, but what Kevin Smith portrays is damn true. Anyways, soon enough we're introduced to the manager of Mooby's, Becky (Rosario Dawson). Just like in the last film, Dante is stuck within another love triangle between Becky and his engaged-to-be-married wife Emma (Jennifer Schwalbach), and of course, Randall suspects something, constantly teasing Dante about it (I told you he was just like me, eh Marat). 10 years later and Dante is still a pimp, despite not being the most handsome man on the planet.

Soon enough we're reintroduced to Jay and Silent Bob, played by Jason Mewes and director Kevin Smith respectably. Jay and Silent Bob went from a couple of unknowns to a big part of pop-culture in the late 90s and early 2000s, and I guess still are. Granted the film was funny, we got way too much of them in Jay and Silent Bob Strikes Back, and it showed they couldn't handle their own story, but are fit to be side characters, stuck in somebody else's big plot. Kevin Smith recognizes this and uses them wisely in this film just as he did in the first film, cameo appearances, short interludes, and musical entertainment, and are never truly interjected into the plot until the final moments of the movie.

Besides just that, we're treated to guest cameo appearances by Ben Affleck and Jason Lee, playing two totally new View Askew characters. Affleck plays a regular customer who looks like he's about to commit suicide, and Jason Lee plays an old High School buddy of Randall and Dante's named Lance Dowds who pokes fun of them for being "32 and flipping burgers". He and Randall have quite a heated exchange because Lance is a multi-millionaire after selling his web site to Amazon.com. Randall loses, believe it or not. This issue is definitely unresolved, which makes me think that we haven't seen the last of that character in the "View Askew Universe". Wanda Sikes also pops in.

P.S. What's Randall's nickname for Lance?

Picklefucker.

A Plot... of feces, but good feces. Tasty Feces.

Speaking of Plot, Clerks II is definitely not your average, run of the mill storyline. Besides the aforementioned Love Triangle, and the Geek Wars, there's more. As it turns out, Dante is about to get married to Emma and Emma wants him to move to Florida where her rich parents are going to be able to get them a car, a house, and a job. For Dante, this is finally the moment he has been waiting for all his life. No more minimum wage work, he's finally walked his way into some rich pussy. Well, the quirky Becky doesn't think Emma is right for Dante, stating that Emma babies him way too much and makes decisions for him, despite being a good person and geniunely caring about Dante. See, this is another thing that makes the film so realistic that it is brilliant. In most movies, Emma would be seen as the villanous bitch, but no, not here. Emma is genuinely a good person who likes Dante, but is honestly just not a good fit. This all leads to a huge plot twist and emotional finale which proves my point.

Well, where does this leave Randall? Yeah, sadly Randall is going to be alone now that Dante's moving to Florida, his only comfort is Elias, whom he considers a total loser and a virgin. Oh, but why is he a virgin? Because his girlfriend has a pussy troll, and if he sticks his cock in her, the troll might bite it off. I'm not bullshitting you here folks, that's how strangely obscene and funny this movie is. Anyways, Randall decides to throw Dante a going away party by ordering Kinky Kelly to come to Mooby's that night. Kinky Kelly is supposedly a woman who has sex with barnyard animals. Once again, I'm not making this up. Turns out, Kinky Kelly is not exactly what they had planned.

Of course, just like all of Randall's plans, hell just like every single plan in all of Kevin Smith's movies, Murphy's Law goes into effect: whatever can go wrong, will go wrong. Everything goes wrong. Dante has to chase Becky after stating something he didn't need to state (well actually... it was Randall, but I won't spoil it), then the restaurant has to close due to the party. It gets better when Dante returns to Mooby's and calls the cops because Dante thinks it's on fire when in fact it's just Kinky Kelly and the smoke machines, then Emma shows up with a wedding cake, only to... well... watch the movie. I promise you you'll flip.


The People... are real

The performances are legendary. Jason Mewes portrayal of Jay is on point. Why? Because he IS Jay. Kevin Smith wrote the entire Jay character from Jason's real-life persona, so he's not really playing a role, rather playing himself. The moments when Mewes are on screen are less than the more recent Smith films, but enough to have him steal whichever scene he is a part of. Silent Bob has his one intellectual moment too (well... kind of), as he always does. In this film, both Jay and Bob have converted to Christianity, claiming that the Bible's full of all kinds of wacky shit. This is funny because I'm a Christian and agree, the Bible is crazy. Smith does a good job of sort of lampooning religion, but not going so far as to disrespect it. Granted the film is full of racial jokes as well (Randall doesn't think Porch Monkey is a racial slur because his grandmother used to say it to him when he was younger, and he's white) which may offend some people. The film also has some grotesk scenes of Beastiality. Granted nothing is really shown, it's all implied, but it still may offend some people. You'd better have an open mind to see this one.

Anyways, back to the performances. Brian O' Halloran's Dante is excellent yet again. It shows that he may have aged, but he's still the bashful, somewhat confident counterpart to Randall. The scenes with Rosario Dawson show the true talent that Brian O'Halloran conveys, where you can actually see the caring and admiration in his eyes.

Jeff Anderson is the king of Clerks II as Randall steals the show, yet again. Randall is the Beta to Dante's Alpha, to the point where they need each other. Randall even admits that in the climax of the film, which shows just how human these characters really are. Just like me, Randall's quick wit makes mince-meat out of anybody who dare cross his path, despite the fact that he works at a burger place. In fact, he's only psyched out by Jason Lee's character, which I feel is the beginning of a new rivalry in the View Askew universe, possibly for Smith's next film. Randall doesn't give a shit about anything except his friends, sex, and having a good time. I feel most people need to have this mentality in order to not go crazy in this fuccked up world.

Elias is the weird one of the bunch. This character is the stereotypical nerd, but its portrayal is strange. He almost acts hypnotized, slurring his words and talking slow, but I'm sure this was all part of Smith's direction. I think we'll see Fehrman back, just because now he's officially a part of the crew. By the end of the movie, Elias becomes Randall Jr. after having a few beers. The whole idea here is that people truly do change and act different depending on their surroundings; this applies for everybody.

It's official: I love Rosario Dawson. Rosario Dawson is my dream girl, and the character she plays here is one I wanna marry and have 10 kids with. Becky is sort of like a mixture between Dante and Randall. At the start of the film, she's definitely much more like Randall, proclaiming that she doesn't believe in "romantic love" and that we humans were put on this Earth to have sex and multiply, and that marriage goes against our nature. As the film progresses and shit starts to happen, she becomes much more like Dante, a more caring individual who finally accepts that Romantic Love IS real, which makes her as cute as possible. The scene where she teaches Dante how to dance on the roof of the restaurant needs to be captured in cinema history as one of the most beautiful scenes ever, ironically enough coming from a movie which can be considered the most vulgar, politically incorrect film of it's time.


"I wanna be the first guy to find an alien lifeform... and then fuck it"

You're probably wondering, is it funny? Well to quote Jay "Hell. Yes. My Good Man. Put that money. In my hand." The film has legitimate laugh-out-loud moments, mainly due to the incredible talent of Kevin Smith's writing and his quick wit. Much like his other films, the dialogue pieces wind up being the most memorable. Other than possibly Quentin Tarantino, Smith should be remembered as the best pure writer of dialogue. His characters bring you in and keep your attention as they argue about everything from Lord of the Rings, to pussytrolls, to going ass to mouth. It's funny without having the ga-ga overexaggerated humor that most comedies nowadays have.

But that's not what makes Clerks II a piece of greatness. Like the first film, it's the characters that make the play. Kevin Smith said himself that he got the inspiration to make this film after going back and doing the 10th anniversary DVD of the first film and falling in love with those characters again. That is what makes it good. The fact that the characters are so real and that we can all relate to them, or knowing somebody like them, at some point in our sad, miserable lives. See Jay? I KNOW Him. Elias? That's half the people who write on this site! I know somebody just like Dante, so we expect them to do what we would do. And Randall? I AM RANDALL, the good and the bad, and I'll admit it. Kevin Smith really made this movie much more than a comedy... it's life. That's how it is. A lot of us are stuck in shitholes and we need to find our way out, just like Dante and Randall.

So is Clerks II worth dropping change on? Absolutely. See the first one first, just because you have to in order to properly be introduced to these characters and understand the development here the right way, but it's absolutely worth seeing. Don't take your kids to see this one. The big question is, will there be a Clerks III? Well, Kevin Smith said that he wanted this to be the closure of the View Askewniverse, closing Jay and Bob forever. But I sure hope not. The ending of this film was unbelievably satisfying, but there's definitely room for more and you'll see it too. Bottom line is, no matter how much they serve you, even if they own the freakin store, they'll never like you.

4.25 Stars

Recommended: Yes

Movie Mood: Funny Movie
Viewing Method: Sneak Preview at My Local Theater
Film Completeness: Looked complete to me.
Worst Part of this Film: Nothing