Clerks II

In his profane, often hilarious View Askew films, writer-director Kevin Smith plays Silent Bob. It’s telling that Smith opts to play the role of the guy who doesn’t speak, suggesting perhaps a philosophy that art shouldn’t preach, that art should just shut up and give audiences images, stories, and characters. No need to clean things up. No need to put on a shiny bow. Just the grimy, mundane, boring, funny, and perverted. Then again, it’s also telling that Silent Bob always ends up saying something philosophical and abstract.

Clerks II revels in this paradox. On one hand, the film doesn’t do much cleaning up. Smith tosses plenty of dirt at viewers. A spectacle involving a donkey that’s usually reserved for Tijuana. Fast food workers doing gross things to the food of the customers. Silent Bob’s partner-in-crime Jay (Jason Mewes) doing a spot-on imitation of Buffalo Bill’s creepy “Silence of the Lambs” dance. On the other hand, the film gets quite poignant, placing everyman hero/Clerks protagonist Dante (Brian O’Halloran) at the corner of a love triangle and, more importantly, allowing the slackers of the View Askew-niverse to confront their own difficulties with adulthood and responsibility.

Smith manages to walk this line between profane and profound. The story involves a day-in-the-life of Dante and Randal (Jeff Anderson), presently fast food workers, formerly (in the oringial Clerks, that is) employees of convenience and video stores, respectively. Dante’s engaged to the overbearing Emma (Jennifer Schwalbach) but pines for his cute and funny burger-joint-manager Becky (Rosario Dawson, who turns in a great performance). This admittedly thin and not-very-original plot gives Clerks II a framework in which to be laugh-out loud funny, especially scenes in which Randal berates and debates a goody two-shoes co-worker (Trevor Fehrman) about the co-worker’s devotion to Transformers, his mother, and the Lord of the Rings trilogy. And Jay’s Buffalo Bill dance is something you need to see in order to believe.

But Smith also pulls off the poignancy. Dante and Becky are believable as two people who love each other’s company and appreciate each other’s eccentricities. In a nod to real-life, Silent Bob supports Jay’s sobriety (Smith stood by Mewes through the latter’s years of addiction). And of course the best chemistry of all is between Dante and Randal, the slacker Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn.

One misfire was the film’s soundtrack. The original Clerks featured grungy tunes (Bad Religion, Alice in Chains, Love Among Freaks) that sounded like they were being played by dudes Dante and Randall went to high school with. The sequel has glossy tunes from Alanis Morissette and the Talking Heads that seem too serious and self-important for the proceedings.

But overall, a funny piece of work. Kevin Smith junkies and pop culture obsessives will love it. Casual fans of Smith’s work will appreciate the simultaneous maturity and immaturity. And, apparently, Joel Siegel will hate it.