Director Spotlight: Clerks 2

I’m disgusted and I’m repulsed and I… I can’t look away – Becky

Full disclosure time; the original Clerks is one of my most memorable movie experiences.  I was working in a video store when I came across it, and it  made my experiences in retail, somehow, bearable.  So when I heard that Kevin Smith was making a sequel, I knew I had to see it.  And since it got him a standing ovation at the Cannes film festival, I had high expectations.  Clerks 2 blew them all away.

The movie opens with Dante Hicks (Brian O’Halloran) opening the Quick Stop only to bear witness to its final downfall.  Cutting a year further, Dante and his friend Randall Graves (Jeff Anderson) are employees at a fast-food restaurant together on Dante’s last day at work.  He’s about to move to Florida with his fiancée Emma (Jennifer Schwalbach) when the day’s series of events force him to re-evaluate what that move will mean both o him and the friends he’ll be leaving behind in New Jersey.

As with all of Kevin Smith’s “New Jersey” movies, be ready for plenty of crude humor and references to geek culture.  But with Clerks 2, Kevin Smith transcends his crude roots with a story about a man at a crossroads.  It’s also a deep look at the friendship between Dante and Randall.

Anderson gives an outstanding performance as Randall – and that’s a sentence that I couldn’t have written seriously before Clerks 2.  He takes the character of Randall beyond the smart-assed guy who always has an answer for everything and gives him actual dimension.  But the movie wouldn’t work as well as it does without an amazing supporting cast.  Jay (Jason Mewes) and Silent Bob (Kevin Smith) are naturally present, but he standouts are Becky (Rosario Dawson) and Elias (Trevor Fehrman), their fast-food co-workers.

I confessed my bias at the beginning of this review, but I honestly can’t find fault with Clerks 2.  It’s easily my favorite of Smith’s movies and among my favorite movies of all time.

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