Clerks 2 Kevin Smith USA 2006
Kevin Smith needs to grow up. And not in the normal way people mean when they say that. Clerks 2 is a very funny film, and will certainly make it even harder for anybody to think of donkeys without associating them with Tom Hanks’ finest hour in Bachelor Party. That aside though, what’s the point in a sequel to the classic original Clerks?
The film that made Kevin Smith was an off-beat slacker tour-de-force that amused with its raw content, even rawer film making (credit card financed filmmaking in black and white) and obvious wit of the writer/director Smith. It launched his career and movie-wise led on to an inconsistent canon that if nothing else has always amused. One could ask: has Kevin Smith made a good film since the highpoints of Dogma and Chasing Amy?
Kevin Smith has gotten older. As he points out explicitly in Clerks 2, for younger people the trilogy is no longer Star Wars, it’s Lord of the Rings. Smith himself after working in a convenience stop has gone onto Hollywood success making films that generally appeal to a (broad) niche youth audience. What happens to Smith when that niche grows up? That is basically what the film touches upon and is Clerks 2’s biggest issue.
At first the answer to the kids growing up dilemma is that although everything changes, nothing really changes at all. The tenets of genre geekdom or popular culture obsession will never die, so Clerks 2 easily moves on from Star Wars to Lord of the Rings and the Transformers. To Smith’s credit he’s kept with the original cast, who look normal for their thirtysomething ages, which is to say they look hideous by Hollywood standards.
Shockingly for what is a mass-promoted multiplex film Brian O’Halloran looks just like a guy who has spent his twenties working in a convenience store and who has recently transferred to a fast food joint. With his chubby jowls, slightly thinning hair and unflattering glasses here is a depressing testament to what we might all become if we don’t buck up our ideals. Jeff Anderson too looks equally haggard, made worse by the baseball cap he permanently wears. In these ways Clerks 2 accepts that Generation X is getting older but insists that genre-obsession continues.
Some things do change though, notably the introduction of the internet amongst the mainstream since Clerks debuted. A regular thread amongst the more recent Kevin Smith films is a light-hearted dusting of internet bashing. Notably since Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back, Kevin Smith has lightly attacked the internet in his films for being crap. Jay and Silent Bob go on their crusade because of what they read on the internet and Randall in Clerks 2 spends his time baiting and berating people on it. Jason Lee, as a cameoing villain in Clerks 2, is a dot-com millionaire - what more a sign could there be! This isn’t to say that Kevin Smith is anti-internet, he clearly must love it, but this is a trend that signifies a potential shift in youth culture that perhaps Smith isn’t totally on board with.
Returning to the original Clerks, its offbeat structure was one of its strengths. None of Smith’s films since have come close to seeming so spontaneous and fresh. Smith can craft a mean script, of that there is no doubt, but that may be his only power aside from coercing the Weinstein brothers into consistently financing him. Clerks 2 looks like it was shot for television (not including HBO). It’s all about the same characters doing similar things as in the original but is nothing like the first one. It has lost the sparkle of its predecessor that felt that anything might happen next. At one point in Clerks 2 Randall takes Hicks off go-karting after an insult too far from a customer. Stuff like this is exactly what Clerks 2 needs more of. Instead it sticks to a stricter narrative path. Thankfully Kevin Smith is a very funny individual which gives Clerks 2 some unforgettable moments and great dialogue.
Similarly to the way Woody Allen’s films gradually became crap, so in a reduced way have Kevin Smith’s. Allen only had so much time as a neurotic New Yorker seeking love before we tired of watching him do it in his sixties, or watching his avatars do similar. Smith has made far less films and already we tire of his New Jersey slacker world. People lose touch with time and zeitgeist.
My advice is that Kevin Smith should either grow up or grow down. Leave geekdom behind and make films for grown-ups or embrace it fully. He needs to take his filmmaking somewhere other than it is now, and I don’t mean Jersey Girl.
