Reviewed by

Christopher Armstead

So one day my good friend, let’s call him… Francis…, well, let’s call him something else since Francis is his real name.  Let’s call him Fran.  So Fran calls me up and says ‘Chris, the weirdest thing happened at work today.’  I was in the printer room at the agency (maybe I should call it something else too) and me this woman I work with kind of bumped into each other.  Next thing I know, we were loving each other on the office table.’  Now here’s the kicker line.  Francis then asks ‘Dude, has this ever happened to you?’  It was quiet on the line before I had to kick in with ‘Hell no that’s never happened to me.  What the hell is wrong with you?’  Now the reason I mention this little story is because if you’ve already seen Kevin Smith’s ‘Clerks II’ you know that the character of Dante (Brian O’Halloran) and Becky (Rosarie Dawson) had an unseen tryst on the table on the job at the Mooeys fast food restaurant.  Am I the only person on the planet whose never boned a co-worker on the job?  Is this kind of thing deregiur in American society nowadays?  Not that there are any of my co-workers I’m remotely interested in having sex with, and I swear they haven’t wiped the furniture down in years, so the risk of infection is quite high, but it would be nice to know that I have this option.  What a cloistered life I lead. 

Now I didn’t care too much for ‘Clerks II’, and Lord knows I hate to say this because Kevin Smith has a legion of fans who will literally kill for the man, and I don’t want to die.  Hell, I like Mr. Smith and have a big ol’ photo of me and him hugged up next to each other, in a totally non-gay kind of way of course, but watching this was borderline torture.  Now Smith-ites, before you find out where I live and have me rubbed out (though most of you wouldn’t last a single second in my neighborhood),

understand that ‘Chasing Amy’ is on my list as an all-time fave, and I truly enjoyed the angry bitterness of ‘Dogma’, and unlike Joel Siegel, I didn’t walk out of my living room in the middle of the film but I just didn’t like this thing.

 

As a quick rehash we are reunited with Dante and Randall (Jeff Anderson) now some ten plus years later and they are still working at the quick mart.  Sadly the quick mart has burned to the ground leading our two upwardly mobile heroes to Mooeys fast food restaurant where they now get their slack on.  Jay and Silent Bob, fresh out of rehab and preaching for the lord have set up dealing outside the Mooeys and Dante is engaged to be married to the lovely Emma (Jennifer Shwalbach-Smith) and is heading down to sunny Florida the next morning to start his new life.  The rest of the day, as the bulk of the narrative takes place within a single day, consist of Randall’s vulgarities, making fun of the Christian kid, Dante attempting resolve his feelings for Becky, racial insensitivities, and naturally, a donkey show.

 

Now I suppose we could examine the juxtaposition of Clerks II with the concept of being true to yourself, and not forgetting where you come from or blah, blah, blah… You know, if you come from a Quick Mart, and you’ve been working there for fifteen years, then by God it’s time to forget where you come from and become something else.  For real.  So you see, I wasn’t particularly going for the concept of Randall and Dante as heroes, or Anti-Heroes as the case may be, but simply losers.  That’s fine of course, because it’s not like this is ‘Chariots of Fire’ or anything and not to get into the mind of the filmmaker here but I’m thinking the primary goal of a film like ‘Clerks II’ is to make you laugh and not convince slackers that it’s okay to be slackers.  Nothing but love K. Smith, and I love the everyman persona and all, but as a multi million-dollar filmmaker, dude is hardly a slacker.

 

What we’re left with here is laughter and ‘Clerks II’ didn’t give me nearly enough of it, and it’s criminally easy to make me laugh yo.  The whole Ring v Star Wars thing was pretty funny and… well, I guess the porch monkey thing was fairly amusing but the rest of it just didn’t do it for me.  The donkey show was pretty sick, but not very humorous.  Jay and Silent Bob, for whatever reason failed to ignite as I am accustomed to those two doing.  Rosario Dawson has fantastic lips, wonderful bouncy breast and nice round booty, but she’s not very funny either.  And since I could less than a damn about Randall and Dante, when they got their glory at the end, I guess I could less than a damn.

 

Again, Smith-ites, I apologize for not liking the movie.  This doesn’t mean I don’t like Kevin Smith, okay.  It just means I didn’t like the movie.  I know, I know… U.R. LamE and K. Smith Rooolzzzz, I get it already, and I don’t disagree.  But unless you clowns want to get messed up real bad, you’ll heed these words and move on.  I like K.Smith, I didn’t like Clerks II.

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