REVIEW: Clerks 2 - The Sequel to Smith’s First Film Illustrates a Shift from Edgy to Mainstream

By Brian Abrams

Kevin Smith’s potty-mouthed screenplays are relentless, unpredictable, and pretty damn funny. Flanking 1990s dialogue-driven directors Quentin Tarantino and Robert Rodriguez, the Jersey boy has written incredibly snarky riffs, found in the majority of his comedies, like Matt Damon’s atheistic criticisms in Dogma, the vitriolic “the stink palm” bit in Mallrats, and, of course, a wealth of smartass material in his first and arguably finest, Clerks.

I just wish I could say the same for its sequel.

Sure there are some notable gross-out moments, but they don’t have the same snappiness that those punch lines from the 1995 original did. Moreover, the writer/director betrays the original slacker spirit of Clerks by taking a cowardly turn toward Hallmark card sentimentality. Yep, it’s essentially a date flick with a donkey show.

In Clerks 2, the beloved waste station known as the Quick Stop has burned to the ground, placing our favorite odd couple in uniform at the local Mooby Burger. Dante Hicks (Brian O’Halloran) is supposed to tie the knot with a control-freaked blonde (Jennifer Schwalbach, Smith’s wife), and the two of them are to live happily ever after in Florida. The only problem is that, on his last day on the job, Dante has second thoughts.

Certain scruples are holding him back: He’s really in love with his Mooby manager, Becky (Rosario Dawson), who he recently had a fling with on the prep station table. His partner-in-crime, Randal Graves (Jeff Anderson), can’t work the drive-thru alone. The old Quick Stop, albeit in ashes, still calls his name.

Sounds a little too much like an episode from Dawson’s Creek, right? Smith wrongfully expects us to embrace his latest as if we, too, have grown out of the scatological workplace comedy sketch and, instead, want half the film devoted to long-winded dialogues over friendship and growing up. That’s exactly the kind of sappiness that hinders this movie from what Smith’s films do best: shock the living shit out of the audience with harsh and unapologetic rhetoric.

Smith’s once rapid-fire fanboy banter used to bring the house down. Who didn’t burst into tears of laughter after Randal’s monologue on the liabilities of construction workers’ rebuilding the Death Star, or Dante’s reminiscence of a high school forgettable named “Snowball?” Clerks 2 pursues the same subject areas but without the wit, i.e. dialogues on “giving ass-to-mouth” and why Transformers are satanic. Neither of which holds a light saber to the wily rants from more than a decade ago.

The soundtrack has the same problem. This go-round offers innocuous, mainstream fare like a number from Alanis Morissette, the “1979” ballad from Smashing Pumpkins, and B.J. Thomas’ “Raindrops Keep Fallin’ on My Head.” The original juiced us up with testosterone-filled alt tracks from Alice in Chains, Corrosion of Conformity, and Supernova.

The whole thing feels like a throwaway for us and a desperate payday maneuver for Smith. (In a recent interview, the director claimed that, after the Bennifer media circus that overshadowed Jersey Girl, he wanted to do a non-star, low-key project. Yeah. Right. That’s why he picked one of the most high-profile franchises in indie film history.)

The worst part about it is what happened to our dub-slinging friends, Jay and Silent Bob. They still slip dime bags to disenfranchised youths outside the Mooby Burger, but now they are clean, sober, and into Jesus. A supposedly wacky attempt at irony – because these two would be the last to turn to religion – sadly, the skit doesn’t deliver the laughs. It bears too much of an ass-to-mouth aftertaste.


Click here for a different take on Clerks 2 from Steve Bloom