{"id":2284,"date":"2006-07-29T05:54:30","date_gmt":"2006-07-29T09:54:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/cinemacrazed.wordpress.com\/?p=2284"},"modified":"2019-07-20T10:56:12","modified_gmt":"2019-07-20T14:56:12","slug":"clerks-ii-2006","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/2006\/07\/29\/clerks-ii-2006\/","title":{"rendered":"Clerks II (2006)"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"clerks3\"<\/a><\/p>\n

\u201cShit, now where am I going to brings girls to fuck?\u201d asks Randall upon witnessing the video store in flames. Gee, how utterly hip, edgy, and hard rock of him to say. Oh Smith, \u201cHow doth thou sucketh\u201d, said the lord. Hey, I enjoyed the \u201cClerks\u201d animated series, but alas that\u2019s as far as my love goes for the \u201cClerks\u201d franchise extends. The first one was an entertaining albeit mediocre comedy and then movie fans proceeded, and continue to give Smith a continuous hand job in terms of his career that has continued well into his thirties, and \u201cClerks II\u201d is a listless sequel with the usual cast appearances and pop culture gags that drop like a deflated balloon.<\/p>\n

And a man running out of ideas (\u201cDon\u2019t look at his wee wee\u201d? Pfft!). Smith sadly devolves much of the groundwork he laid for \u201cClerks\u201d and its characters and then, like a game of Jenga, smashes it all down by basically setting them up as typical Hollywood concepts; and he seems to be taking pages from \u201cGarden State\u201d. Dante is now a lovelorn pussy seeking a path in life ala Zach Braff, Randal is the go nowhere loser ala Sarsgaard, Rosario Dawson is basically just another love interest, and Jay and Silent Bob are awfully unnecessary appearing every so often without a thing to do and then take part in a truly lame dues ex machine that makes the ending. And Smith, the ever loving Christian inserts much of his religious views here. Jay and Silent Bob are now born again Christians after rehab, the new character Elias is a Christian, and Dante wears a conspicuous crucifix around his neck throughout the entire film.<\/p>\n

We get it, Kevin. Smith\u2019s \u201cedge\u201d is noticeably MIA in his cash-in\u2014er\u2014sequel, and it shows painfully. \u201cClerks\u201d was supposedly a very independent film that\u2019s lost it all in this ironically mainstream cash-in. Now \u201cClerks 2\u201d has a story, and a sappy one about Dante\u2019s infatuation with his boss on the eve of his departure to Florida where he plans on marrying his girlfriend Emma. Along the way we\u2019re exposed to many a pop culture debate, three musical montages, and worst of all, Smith turns his indie comedy into a fucking romance comedy. Another romance comedy! I hate romance comedies! I mean, let\u2019s break it down: The love interest, the moment where he realizes he loves her with a far off gaze, his best friend telling him “You love her, admit it!”, the proposal scene that’s both dramatic and funny, and the montage that lets you know “Everything turned out fine”. I’m just thankful we didn’t see pictures of their baby.<\/p>\n

What I didn’t take issue with was Randal. Why doesn\u2019t Randal have his own film? I mean sure Dante is the straight man in the duo, but I want Randal to have his own spin-off, because he saves this film. Anderson as Randal saves the film, he steals the film, and he makes this worth watching over and over again. If Smith is any kind of writer, he\u2019ll find something for Randal to have all his own even if it has to be another sequel. Suffice it to say, Smith\u2019s dialogue is great at certain moments when it\u2019s not purposely setting the scene up for a pop culture debate or examination. The moments where our characters are just communing among one another and discussing life make \u201cClerks 2\u201d a goldmine for observational humor, including a hilarious argument about saying Porch Monkey.<\/p>\n

And then there are the golden moments of pure comedy that had me in tears. There\u2019s the \u201cSilence of the Lambs\u201d spoof which was a mixture of disturbing and laugh out loud funny, and the predictable turned hysterical debate of the \u201cStar Wars\u201d versus \u201cLord of the Rings\u201d with Randal against Ringers, and the delivery is just entertaining and kurt. Smith pins the character dialogue well, and I wish there was more of that here. \u201cClerks 2\u201d also manages to redeem itself in the second half actually focusing on the relationship between Dante and Randal.<\/p>\n

Smith basically kicks his fans in the balls by adhering to Hollywood archetypes and turns his career making film into another cookie cutter romantic comedy that has a happy ending where our hero goes off into the sunset. Oh don\u2019t pretend I ruined anything for you, Smith is completely clich\u00e9 here. As a sequel to \u201cGarden State\u201d it\u2019s weak, but as a sequel to \u201cClerks\u201d it\u2019s really weak. I was hoping to love this film, since sequels are basically better than the first film on most occasions, but sadly, it\u2019s a rather weak sequel to a rather weak film. While Randall is pure entertainment, the rest of the film is bland and clich\u00e9. And the fan boy hand job continues for ol\u2019 Smith.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u201cShit, now where am I going to brings girls to fuck?\u201d asks Randall upon witnessing the video store in flames. Gee, how utterly hip, edgy, and hard rock of him to say. Oh Smith, \u201cHow doth thou sucketh\u201d, said the lord. Hey, I enjoyed the \u201cClerks\u201d animated series, but alas that\u2019s as far as my […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[170,219,576,874,922],"class_list":["post-2284","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-movie-reviews","tag-c","tag-comedy","tag-kevin-smith","tag-romance","tag-sequel"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2284","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2284"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2284\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":31629,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2284\/revisions\/31629"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2284"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2284"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2284"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}