"Clerks II" MGM Director: Kevin Smith
Few directors are as popular among the college crowd as Kevin Smith. His movies appeal to twenty-something guys the same way that "Gilmore Girls" appeals to high school girls: The bubble they take place in is a male geek wet dream, in which everyone talks the way we'd all like to if we were wittier, members of the opposite sex act pretty much exactly how we would want them to, and the topics of the day almost always hover around those two issues so vitally important to young people - relationships and pop culture. The two visions are unsurprisingly polar opposites - Smith's urban working-class crudity comes from somewhere completely alien to the small-town quirkiness of "Girls" - but "Clerks II" is as close to a television episode as any of his films have been. As such, the success of its character-based humor above all the film's other elements makes it the perfect encapsulation of Smith's filmmaking strengths and weaknesses. What works best about "Clerks II," and its main draw, is the simple pleasure of watching these characters again. Smith has returned to this universe in multiple other works since 1994's "Clerks," which first introduced foul-mouthed clerks Dante and Randal along with the now-iconic comedy duo Jay and Silent Bob. The setup this time is that Dante and Randal are now working in a fast food restaurant instead of their old convenience store, and that Dante plans to leave New Jersey for Florida with his fiancee Emma. We watch for reasons similar to watching a good sitcom - not because of the rudimentary plot line, but because of the characters' refreshing chemistry and often hilarious interactions. They don't disappoint, offering up several funny conversations covering familiarly off-the-wall territory such as the "Lord of the Rings" trilogy, various sexual acts and racist terminology. The movie gets bogged down, however, by the clumsy handling of its narrative. As the film wears on, Smith spends more and more time trying to lend emotional weight to Dante's mixed feelings about leaving - his ties to best friend Randal, his romantic entanglement with his boss Becky (Rosario Dawson, easily the best performer here), and his fondness for his job - and the lack of subtlety results in everything being over-explained, as well as some cringe-worthy dialogue. In the middle of the film, Dante and Randal's shift to flipping burgers has reached a particularly frustrating point, and the two leave their post to go ride go-karts. It's a great little moment, both celebratory and sympathetic without pushing too far into sentiment. Unfortunately, the buzz gets killed in the very next scene, in which the two discuss what, exactly, go-kart riding just meant to them, and express their frustrations with their place in society - in other words, a voicing out of everything already conveyed in prior scenes. Like all of "Clerks II," it's a microcosm of Smith's filmmaking, his considerable talents compromised yet again by his struggles in constructing a narrative.