Clerks III (2022, Kevin Smith)

Clerks III starts as a series of vignettes reintroducing the characters. It’s been fifteen years since the previous entry; since then, spoiler alert, one of them has become a widower, and neither has done anything with their lives. For the first time, Jeff Anderson gets a little more to do than Brian O’Halloran, though only in the third act.

Until then, the movie’s a quick setup—Anderson has a heart attack and decides to make a movie about his life at the Quick Stop—with the actors doing their familiar banter routines, just updated a little more the times. Trevor Fehrman, also returning from II, now has his own sidekick, Austin Zajur. Director Smith reprises as Silent Bob, Jason Mewes is Jay. Everyone’s back, including ex-girlfriends Rosario Dawson, Marilyn Ghigliotti, and Jennifer Schwalbach Smith.

Many of the actors—besides Dawson, obviously, whose performance is visibly effortless compared to her costars—haven’t been in a movie since a Clerks and it shows. Schwalbach Smith is so bad I was able to identify her as the director’s wife just by her performance. No other way she’d have gotten the gig. Ghigliotti gets back into the groove quickly, though.

The funniest section of the film is while they’re making the movie. In addition to Anderson and O’Halloran, Mewes and Fehrman are around to cause hijinks, and III brings back all the actors from the first movie to play their “scenes.” It’s kind of lovely, actually, getting the same bit players back, thirty years on. The film doesn’t get sentimental about it, which is good because it goes off the rails with sentiment. The third act’s sincere, almost successful—successful to the point it saves the movie—ultimately a fail. Smith doesn’t just fumble the ending; he intentionally smashes it.

Besides that section, the second act is almost entirely scenes or montages set to modern folk rock. The first act is all nineties soundalikes (or nineties songs, I guess, I didn’t Shazam), which makes sense since the whole movie starts as an homage to that era. That soundtrack at least fits; the folk-rock? They should’ve just done a musical. Especially since there are great cameos from Melissa Benoist and Chris Wood auditioning for the movie-in-the-movie, and they both want to do it musical theater.

The other cameos are hot and cold. Amy Sedaris has a lengthy cameo where Anderson can’t shut up about “The Mandalorian,” a show she stars in, but the bits aren’t funny because Anderson’s not a nineties Star Wars nerd anymore; he’s just a regular white guy fifty-year-old. And Sedaris is bad. Justin Long’s also bad. Luckily they’re only in it for a bit.

Anderson’s good until he’s got to “come to Buddy Christ,” and then it’s not his fault. Smith can’t figure out how to write it, so it’s another montage, not even a sensical one. O’Halloran seems nervous, disinterested, and miserable to be making another Clerks for two-thirds of the movie, then has a breakout scene, but then the movie’s over.

Clerks III is, of course, a very long shot, but even as a miss, it showcases why it could’ve been a hit.

Maybe Smith’ll figure it out by IV.

Clerks (1994, Kevin Smith)

Clerks operates on intensity. But it’s mostly dialogue and there’s not a lot of action. So director Smith relies on surprises, whether visual, in dialogue, in plot. At its best, Clerks is creative with its constraints. At its worst, Clerks is lead Brian O’Halloran whining (badly, I might add). There’s a lot of whining. Only O’Halloran is supposed to be the viewer’s POV; Smith structures the narrative from this negative place. That POV allows for a lot of the humor–and it gives Jeff Anderson’s sidekick character more implied depth than O’Halloran gets–but it does get annoying at times. As Clerks progresses, Smith gets a lot less inventive and not just with the filmmaking, but with the narrative.

The film ends up being about O’Halloran and his place in the universe. While it does start with O’Halloran, it’s more about his juvenile behavior in his relationship with his girlfriend, Marilyn Ghigliotti in the film’s best performance. O’Halloran isn’t good and Smith doesn’t know how to direct him to be better. The script requires a lot of charm for the part to work and O’Halloran doesn’t have it. He even gets less likable as the movie goes on and he becomes less and less imposing a protagonist.

Maybe if O’Halloran were actually structured to have everything go on around him, but Smith doesn’t set things up well. Clerks is a lot of solid creative impulses running out of steam before they’re anywhere near finished. Same goes for Smith’s script–he’s got some interesting questions but the answers never surpass mediocre.

Anderson’s fantastic, O’Halloran isn’t. There’s amusing support from Jason Mewes, problematic–but earnest–support from Lisa Spoonauer (in the film’s most problematic role).

Great photography from David Klein, great editing (for the most part) from Smith and Scott Mosier.

Clerks goes from better to worse to a little bit better, but having a strong sense of itself for the finale doesn’t make up for all the time it spends floundering.

The Flying Car (2002, Kevin Smith)

Maybe halfway through The Flying Car, I noticed one of the retakes of Jeff Anderson. The short takes place while Anderson and Brian O’Halloran are stuck in a traffic jam. Smith is setting up the viewer for a joke while Anderson sets up O’Halloran for the same one. Great dialogue, excellent performance from Anderson. It’s a fine little thing.

Except then there’s the retake. There are a few of them, two on Anderson, maybe two on O’Halloran. The entire short is unimaginatively shot–Smith either shoots one or the other. No rapid fire exchanges in the same framing (which only happens twice).

Anyway, that retake. Smith shoots it from outside the car, showing the windshield and–presumably–reflections of the world outside. It immediately gives Car a different, better feel. It seems less gimmicky, more natural.

The dialogue and joke are great, but Smith’s lack of imagination hurts Car bad.

Clerks II (2006, Kevin Smith)

I was going to start this post with a comment about how, even with all its problems, Clerks II is easily Kevin Smith’s best film. I guess I’ll still start with some of those remarks–Smith’s editing is excellent here, not to mention the traditional romantic comedy between Brian O’Halloran and Rosario Dawson–which is incredibly movie traditional and well-done by Dawson and Smith (O’Halloran is awful in the scenes). There’s a musical number in the film and, as I watched it, I realized, whether he acknowledges it or not, whether he ever utilizes the skills again, Smith’s finally become a good filmmaker.

A lot of Clerks II is an attempt to gross out and shock the audience. It’s not particularly tied to the existing Kevin Smith universe and when the characters finally reveal what they’d been up to for ten years, it’s a surprise. Even though the film opens with some direct references to the first movie, it does not feel like much a sequel… and it might be the most impressive sequel, in terms of artistic achievement, I’ve seen in a long time. There doesn’t need to be a Clerks for there to be a Clerks II. The film doesn’t “stand on it’s own” or whatever, it succeeds where the first film could not. Listless thirties angst versus listless twenties angst… there’s no contest.

I’m going to try to go through the bad stuff here and then bring around the last paragraph to–try to–express the film’s success (I’ll fail). Smith as Silent Bob–but not Jason Mewes–is unbearable. He plays the part like a cartoon, whereas his own script calls for a semblance of reality. And as incredibly embarrassed as he should be for himself (so embarrassed I started the sentence with an “and”), nothing should compare to the embarrassment over (his wife) Jennifer Schwalbach’s performance. She and O’Halloran’s scenes are bad high school level acting. It really reminds of the terrible acting in the first film, which at least had the excuse of not having a budget (Clerks II should also have been black and white… kind of… it should have had exaggerated colors maybe, since Smith does use the black and white in parts and to extraordinary success). But anyway, she’s atrocious. In fact, writing about her has made me forget a lot of my other comments.

The first half of the film has a lot of missteps, because it’s hard to get used to Rosario Dawson acting and Brian O’Halloran doing his thing, it’s hard to get used to Schwalbach being treated like she’s not awful. It’s also very obvious how Smith is giving Dawson and the romantic comedy a lot of screen time and shoving Jeff Anderson off on anti-fanboy rants. Anderson’s great at those, but, like in the first one, he’s capable of acting and acting well and in one sequence, where Smith works the editing and the music, he and Anderson pull the movie around.

Then, the film goes through an odd third act, featuring all the scenes meant to enrage the MPAA (not really, Smith seems to have tried that one early on)–but disgust the MPAA and realize an R-rated “Family Guy”–and ends up in an amazing resolution. A mature, thoughtful resolution….

I was expecting something self-referential–especially during the cameo scenes–but Smith avoids all those traps… if it weren’t for Rocky Balboa, I’d say it’s the most successful delayed sequel in a long time… but even with Rocky (and some of Clerks II’s successes are artistically similar), it’s one heck of an achievement for Smith.

If only he could fire his wife (I can understand O’Halloran–he kind of has to be in it, but there’s no good reason for Schwalbach).