Clerks II: Movie, DVD, HD DVD Review (2006)

(Originally published 2006)

Perhaps it's best to pretend that Kevin Smith's last film, "Jersey Girl," never hit the screen. It wouldn't be difficult to do. For many, the pretending began soon after the movie's 2004 release.

"Jersey Girl" was Smith's most grown-up film to date, an attempt to move beyond the comic book fantasy world in which he thrived and was happy pushing buttons, and try something new. The problem was that in trying something new, he ended up producing what so many in the business were busy producing--a safe, bland drama with no ideas, no edge, no shape that was designed to appeal to the broadest possible audience.

In a word--boo.

Considering where he has taken us over the course of his career, from "Clerks" to "Chasing Amy," "Dogma" to "Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back," the idea that Smith wanted to be on his best behavior in "Jersey Girl" was as unnatural as a stripper in a nun's habit. For Smith, the clothes didn't fit--and the movie didn't work.

Now, Smith's fans will be happy to know that the politically incorrect button-pushing is back in the director's new movie, "Clerks II," a sharp, smart return to raunchy form that picks up 12 years after its famed predecessor became an underground hit.

Once again, the film stars Brian O'Halloran and Jeff Anderson as Dante and Randal, two aimless friends, now 33, who literally are jarred out of the rhythmic safety of their longtime jobs at the Quick Stop convenience store when Dante arrives to find the place engulfed in flames.

With the store toast, the duo--shaken out of their comfort zones--moves on to the equally dead-end fast-food restaurant Mooby's. There, the specialty is Cow Pie, Dante becomes an assistant manager, and Randal, when not busy shucking food, keeps busy by picking on creepy co-worker, Elias (Trevor Fehrman, wonderful), or launching into a myriad of rants that push this film beyond the limits of its R rating.

Working effortlessly in a subplot is Rosario Dawson in a winning performance as Becky, manager of Mooby's, who has developed a friendship with Dante that could become much more if he weren't engaged to Emma Bunting (Smith's real-life wife, Jennifer Schwalbach), a pinched, controlling woman who is one leather suit and whip away from being a dominatrix.

Outside the restaurant, it's a familiar world of foul, with Jay (Jason Mewes) and Silent Bob (Smith) busy selling dope while startling the screen with the occasional moment of horror, such as when Jay plays nude homage to Jame Gumm, the serial killer in "Silence of the Lambs." At my screening, it laid the audience flat.

But so did so much of the movie. Raunch only works well if there is an undercurrent of substance at hand to lift the bottom feeding. "The 40-Year-Old Virgin" did this well, and now so does "Clerks II," a movie that has no problem plunging into the messy depths of bestiality while also, somehow, generating a groundswell of affection for the characters understandably dumbstruck by it.

Grade: B+