There are three things one needs to know about Clerks II:
- If you didn't see the first movie, you will not particularly enjoy the second.
- If you did see the first movie, you've already seen the second one, only better.
- I still laughed out loud several times. This hardly ever happens during movies that don't cast Matthew McConaughey as someone who holds a graduate degree.
What a pleasure it is to see Rosario Dawson set down her guns and whip and actually smile in a role. She sparkles. Pity that the role is so one-note. In Kevin Smith's latest opus, women are either 1) shrill, controlling Barbies or 2) idyllic, redeeming beauties with implausibly low standards in men. If this movie is to work at the emotional level for which it aims, the Dawson character must be believable. She's lovable, but in that way beautiful women are lovable only in movies: she redeems a man. Isn't this male fantasy played out yet?
The movie isn't funny so much as it's laugh-out-loud hilarious in places separated by chasms of mild-to-nil amusement. I don't remember watching the first Clerks and thinking what occurred to me today: "What this scene lacks in humor, it makes up for in endlessness."
Parts did work. It was a pleasure to see these characters again, especially Randall. "Lord of the Rings" simply demanded his interpretation, dammit. For all efforts to make this Dante's film, it's really Randall's. There's something oddly affirming and charming about his refusal to accept that the term "porch monkey" has any racial overtones whatsoever. His grandmother called him that, and that's the end of the debate. If the world sees the term another way, that's the world's problem; Randall will gladly correct them. Odd that the character who spews the most offensive things is, at his core, the most innocent.
The original Clerks shocked and delighted us in a way no successor could, so Clerks II has that going against it. Even without that handicap, though, the sequel's maybe 20% as funny as the original. Me, I loved the original enough that 20% Clerks was still worth seeing. You do the math and decide for yourself.