'Clerks' follows the lives of two convenience store clerks named Dante (Brian O'Halloran) and Randal (Jeff Anderson), as they struggle through a Saturday shift. Throughout the course of the day, they meet some strange customers and endure some crazy experiences. And things get even crazier for Dante when problems with his current girlfriend coincide with a renewed relationship with his ex.
Kevin Smith is an extremely divisive personality in the film world – he is either lovingly (and sometimes obsessively) revered, or treated with a lot of disdain. I fall somewhere in between, mainly because I thought 'Chasing Amy' was just alright and really enjoyed 'Dogma'. And, truth be told, I decided to watch 'Clerks' because this was seen as the quintessential Kevin Smith movie. If you like 'Clerks', you'll probably be a Kevin Smith fan.
Well, I did not like 'Clerks'.
Now let me preface this by saying that, at times, this movie is very funny. Kevin Smith is very good at writing dialogue, something he proved in his later films but had nailed from the beginning. Some of the conversations in the film are so fun to listen to, mainly for their zippy nature and outrageous subject matter. Pretty much everyone working on the movie are Smith's friends, and that chemistry is so evident in the scenes. You can feel the fun on screen.
But that's also the inherent problem with 'Clerks' – it's so ridiculously self-indulgent. A lot of Smith's friends aren't very good actors. Jason Mewes is a cult legend but he's not very good. Same goes for Jeff Anderson. The Randal character is a great one, don't get me wrong; but someone with better acting abilities could have really made it spectacular. Tellingly, the two best actors in the film (O'Halloran and Ghigliotti) are not part of that friendship group.
Another issue with 'Clerks' is that it's written for a particular generation. Smith was writing about himself and his friends, those young people living in 1990s New Jersey. So if you were young at that time, 'Clerks' was extremely relatable. But, in 2013, maybe not so much, especially if you're from England. While I'm able to appreciate that films can be good without necessarily speaking to me, the films need to be good.
As a blueprint for what came later in Kevin Smith's filmography, this was a perfectly acceptable movie. You can see how the experiences on 'Clerks' has inspired what he does now. But as a film in its own right, the film is nowhere near as good as some people make it out to be. It's also definitely not the legendary cult movie it has seemingly become. I wouldn't say watching 'Clerks' was a waste of time; it was a disappointment though.
Kevin Smith is an extremely divisive personality in the film world – he is either lovingly (and sometimes obsessively) revered, or treated with a lot of disdain. I fall somewhere in between, mainly because I thought 'Chasing Amy' was just alright and really enjoyed 'Dogma'. And, truth be told, I decided to watch 'Clerks' because this was seen as the quintessential Kevin Smith movie. If you like 'Clerks', you'll probably be a Kevin Smith fan.
Well, I did not like 'Clerks'.
Now let me preface this by saying that, at times, this movie is very funny. Kevin Smith is very good at writing dialogue, something he proved in his later films but had nailed from the beginning. Some of the conversations in the film are so fun to listen to, mainly for their zippy nature and outrageous subject matter. Pretty much everyone working on the movie are Smith's friends, and that chemistry is so evident in the scenes. You can feel the fun on screen.
But that's also the inherent problem with 'Clerks' – it's so ridiculously self-indulgent. A lot of Smith's friends aren't very good actors. Jason Mewes is a cult legend but he's not very good. Same goes for Jeff Anderson. The Randal character is a great one, don't get me wrong; but someone with better acting abilities could have really made it spectacular. Tellingly, the two best actors in the film (O'Halloran and Ghigliotti) are not part of that friendship group.
Another issue with 'Clerks' is that it's written for a particular generation. Smith was writing about himself and his friends, those young people living in 1990s New Jersey. So if you were young at that time, 'Clerks' was extremely relatable. But, in 2013, maybe not so much, especially if you're from England. While I'm able to appreciate that films can be good without necessarily speaking to me, the films need to be good.
As a blueprint for what came later in Kevin Smith's filmography, this was a perfectly acceptable movie. You can see how the experiences on 'Clerks' has inspired what he does now. But as a film in its own right, the film is nowhere near as good as some people make it out to be. It's also definitely not the legendary cult movie it has seemingly become. I wouldn't say watching 'Clerks' was a waste of time; it was a disappointment though.