Actually Never

There was once a time when skipping a Kevin Smith movie would have been unthinkable for me.

Here I really should post this picture from the early 2000s with me and my Dogma t-shirt and my shaved head and my tiny glasses and my goatee that I never quite got around to finishing. Unfortunately for you, I can’t find it. And I honestly did look. Why? To make Jeff laugh. And to make you laugh, if you happen to stumble across this and are not Jeff.

So I was a big fan. But then, I dunno. Maybe my tastes changed. Maybe Kevin Smith’s output changed. Maybe both. After the original Clerks, it felt to me like he leaned too hard into “aw shucks I’m just a guy who makes dick and fart jokes” as a way to not have to put effort into writing anything actually funny. Clerks II only had one scene I liked, where Randal realizes his grandma was racist – and even that was only because it felt… very familiar, shall we say. Zack and Miri Make a Porno was a solid idea and I enjoyed Other Zack, but overall it didn’t land with me and I hadn’t seen a Kevin Smith movie since. Even Red State, which I got on Blu-ray at Dollarama for $3 probably a decade ago. I should get on that. I should get on a lot of things.

What I knew

In 2018, Kevin Smith had a heart attack and nearly died. Clerks III is about Randal also having a heart attack and also nearly dying. He survives, but feeling like he needs to do something more with his life, he decides to make a movie about his life as a convenience store clerk.

What I know

This was not a good movie.

It has one main joke. “In the movie, [I/you] should do [thing from the first Clerks].” “That’s stupid, what a stupid thing to do, what kind of stupid person would do that with their movie?” You get a lot of these.

The emergency backup joke is that Jay and Silent Bob bought the space that used to be the video store and turned it into a dispensary, but they still sell weed while hanging out in front of the store like they used to do. This is a cute enough idea for a bit but it also gets beaten into the ground. It feels like either Smith didn’t trust the audience to get the jokes.

And maybe it’s the recency bias talking, but I’m not sure I’ve ever disliked a character in a movie more than Elias. Weak concept, worse execution.

Subtlety has never been a strong point of Smith’s movies. And I won’t get into spoiler territory, but the main conflicts that arise between Randal and Dante are written in such a phony, heavy-handed way. It’s frustrating – I can see the bones of a really good story here. It doesn’t quite work but I can easily see how it could.

I don’t know if it could also be a funny story, but that’s a separate issue.

This has been a lot of negativity. And I don’t love that, because here’s the thing – despite all of this, I didn’t hate this movie. Part of it was just was the nostalgia of seeing these familiar characters again. But moreover, I think it has just to do with Kevin Smith seeming like a good dude who appreciates his audience, and taking inspiration from a serious real-life event in a way that made sense for these characters. This all clearly comes from a sincere place. (Please give me credit for not saying “his heart was in it” or somesuch.) I’ll likely never watch this movie again but I’m not upset that I saw it.