This movie has been sitting around here waiting to be watched for years. I just couldn't bring myself to do it. I don't know what's different about today. Maybe I just needed some mindless humor. I'm a big fan of Kevin Smith. I like his aesthetic and I think the tubby bitch is funny. I really dug Clerks and I just couldn't bring myself to watch the sequel in case it sucked. But, it didn't. Sure, since I liked every other movie of his I've seen, I don't know why this would suck. (I have not watched Jersey Girl, so maybe that one does suck, since even Smith says it does...now I totally have to find out.) Clerks captured a certain something, maybe the smart-ass side of the Slacker generation, especially those of us on the tail-end of Generation X. The movie was good in spite of itself. The odds of that happening again were pretty goddamned small. It could fail if the now famous Smith tried to recapture his indy voice, and yes I am one of those dude's that thinks an artist can totally sell-out and only make shit after he goes all corporate, but I'm also wise enough to know that not everyone does, and in fact there are some that make barely passable art as an indy artist but make great stuff playing with the big boys. Sometimes Smith tries too hard, and I love him for it, but you watch his stuff in spite of itself because you're paying your respects. I also thought that he might go all slick for a sequel, you know pull a Richard Linklater on me. Linklater is one of those folk that was better before he sold-out. I think that's the very definition of selling out - not taking money for your work, but taking money and changing your work to fit what the producers want because you like the pay check. Well, Smith kept it Smith. This was a wordy film, and I wouldn't have had it any other way.
O'Halloran and Anderson traded a bit of their newness for better acting skills, which I think balanced out their performances with the first incarnation of these characters in Clerks. Mewes and Smith are Jay and Silent Bob, no more no less, and where else are you going to see Mewes in a full frontal nude shot? The two gems of this movie that really make it worth watching are Trevor Fehrman as Elias, and Rosario Dawson as Becky. Elias and Becky work with Dante and Randall at Mooby's which is a fast food joint. There are all the gross and funny bits you would expect, while Becky and Dante totally have a thing going on, even though Dante is engaged to Emma and is in fact supposed to be leaving with her to Florida the next day. Well, it's mostly Dawson with the chemistry, O'Halloran is a doofus as Dante, but that's okay because Dante is a doofus. I was just thinking last night about what Rosario Dawson has been up to lately, and then there she is. I realize that this film came out 7 years ago, but I sware that I didn't know that she was in it. To be honest, if I had, I would have tempted fate and watched it long ago. Even if this film had totally sucked donkey, which it didn't except for that one scene where the guy was supposed to be sucking off a donkey, I would have watched it to see her, that's how good I think she is. Not to mention totally hot.
Clerks II on IMDb
No comments:
Post a Comment