June 01, 2008
Clerks
Low budget, lowbrow laughter
Clerks is a silly but real feeling film that speaks its mind and attempts to offend at every opportunity. The same honesty that may offend some also makes for a refreshing, though still blatantly immature, comedy. Though poorly acted, Clerks is hilarious and surprisingly heartwarming. Writer and director Kevin Smith’s debut effort cleverly manages to connect to its audience emotionally while remaining outlandishly perverse.
Smith’s small New Jersey town of foul-mouthed losers is presided over by Dante Hicks and Randall graves; corner and video store clerks who have only a dim understanding of adulthood and the responsibilities that come with it. The film follows Dante through a day, successfully depicting the boring daily realities we all hate as entertaining life lessons. By the end of the day Mr. Hicks and Mr. Graves learn that while it may be fun to float through life, the world surely has more to offer them (apparently this lesson was forgotten by the time they reappeared in Clerks II).
Dante’s life sucks and it is the people around him that provide opportunities for the audience to learn and laugh. Dante’s friends and acquaintances transform his bleak existence into something attractive through their loveable, subtly rebellious natures. Now-famous Jay and Silent Bob are the most notable of many characters who help make Dante’s misery hilarious. The two slackers sing, dance and peddle pot all day long, somehow out-slacking even Dante and Randall. Jay and Bob do very little else until the end of Dante’s day when Silent Bob defies his moniker and dispenses insightful advice, but their presence is priceless.
Clerks finds much of its humor and energy in the contempt the two customer service representatives harbor the customers they are paid to help. Dante despises the customers he serves but is, with one notable exception, kind and polite, but Randall’s disdain takes horrifying forms. Randall’s inability to quell his disgust causes him to, amongst other things, spit water on one man in the Quickstop and order multiple, obscenely named porn videos in front of a mother and young child at the video store.
Jay and Silent Bob’s antics combined with Dante and Randall’s irresponsibility create a dirty and immature environment, but Smith has a sly way of presenting one film to his audience, while slipping an entirely different film right under their noses. Clerks is packed with perverse humor, adolescent idiot-philosophy, and careless behavior, but it also has an undercurrent of adult situations and a strong romantic element that blends nicely.
Clerks somehow walks a weird line between a lame, sappy, romantic comedy that the film’s fans would hate and the appealing, raunchy, immature cuss-fest that they love. Randall’s wild antics and Jay and Silent Bob’s unique brand of comedy strangely compliment Dante’s quest for love and happiness.
Dante, ugly but charming in a doofy way, is torn between his current girlfriend, and his ex-girlfriend Caitlin, who is coming back to town and seems to still have feelings for him, even if only southerly in nature. Dante finds out part way through his day, and his excitement of seeing her again, that Caitlin is engaged. He still manages to get her to go on a date with him, as he faces confused feelings for his girlfriend.
Naturally, Dante’s date with Caitlin is ruined when she mistakenly has sex with a dead man. But that is the beauty of Clerks; it can be a little bit touching and sappy without feeling any less cool or rebellious because it is still cussing, offending and shirking responsibility the entire time. In true looser fashion, Clerks turns sucking at life into an art form. Not many can master this art but Smith, Dante, Randall, Jay and Bob come damn close.
