I haven't done a movie review in over a year and I wish to do more of these. I'm just really lazy. Seeing how this blog has months between updates and updates tend to come in clusters, I need to get on top of things...Here's my review of Clerks, one of my all time favorite movies...
37 dicks. That's right. When I was younger (I'm only 22 right now), running into a girl who you knew had performed fellatio on that many men was a blessing in disguise. You knew, that without a doubt, you were walking away a happy camper having had your penis loved on by the taste buds of the lady of the nearest lake. I saw this movie when I was 13 or 14 and to be honest, it only really made the impact on me later in my life. 37 dicks is something I certainly wouldn't aspire to if I were a female and now, as a male in my early 20s, I ran the risk of contracting some serious STDs in my more promiscuous days. It's a turn off now. And to state the obvious, being in a committed relationship is enough to turn you away from sluts...Not to degrade women in any sort of way, there are just some out there that are walking receptacles for infected semen. Now, a woman should be proud of her sexuality. This isn't the 50s mindset anywhere, but I'll stop simultaneously preaching misogyny and feminism for the sake of completing this review...And even I after proof reading that, do not understand what point I was attempting to make...The Japanese need to make a Clerks tentacle porn with a beast of 37 dicks. I'd watch the shit out of that and I absolutely hate anime and hentai. Fuck it...Balls...Shit...FUCK...
This movie did break new ground in that it is almost entirely dialogue. Nothing really happens that isn't a result of the movie's vivid explicit spectacle of speech. It's a lot of weed, dick and fart jokes and solidified Kevin Smith's career as the sole purveyor of weed, dick and fart joke in a seemingly intelligent way. His vocabulary is his strong suit and the delivery of some of these jokes includes such examples of uncommon lexicon that a having a lexicon handy is the only way some of the humor can be grasped in layman's terms. Don't expect to get get everything in your first viewing. It takes several to truly extract every last laugh from the flick.
The story is basically about two guys at two businesses owned by the same mysterious boss who talk...A lot...Most of these discussions have absolutely nothing to do with the actual plot. Something about 37 dicks...Something else about playing hockey on the roof of the convenience store and something about fucking. And BERZERKER! Figuring out the plot is a daunting task in itself because you're constantly sucked into the film's irrelevant dialogue. Plot twists? Nah, well maybe if you count a girl fucking a dead guy in the bathroom due to a case of mistaken identity...
You see, some, in not most of the funniest moments are the crudest. For example, when Randal reads off the porno movie titles in front of the mother and her young daughter without a care in the world. He's not oblivious to their presence, he just flat out does not give a flying fucking fuck. Let's take a look at the main characters for a moment. Dante is a little whining bitch who got called in on his day off. I flat out don't really like him, because he's pretty much a bitch. The character is supposed to represent Kevin Smith in his youth, which leads me to the conclusion that Kevin Smith is a whiny bitch...And a fat whiny bitch at that, who bitches cause he had to buy two plane tickets to properly seat his gargantuan ass...In fact, I hate the Dante character so much, had the original ending been included, the film would have worked excellently as a tragedy for someone who almost cannot be sympathized with. Maybe tragedy isn't the term I'm looking for...Maybe his death would have summarized the previous generation's complacency in the world. Although it wouldn't have been the gunman's motive (which is theft), I'd interpret the shooting as having been a mercy killing. Dante is so self absorbed and miserable, I'm sure he would have welcomed his demise with arms wide open. Maybe that was Mr. Smith's original intent, but those test screenings are certainly a bitch and a half...And maybe then we wouldn't have the travesty that is Clerks 2 if Dante had died, seeing how he is essentially focal point of the movie. Maybe they could have made "Clerk: A Sequel To Clerks" starring the best part of the movie, Randal Fucking Graves!
Randal is awesome. Randal is king! Randal makes the movie...Who the fuck thinks of the independent contractors on the uncompleted second Death Star? Randal does! He is the true genius of the movie. And we also have Jay and Silent Bob making their debut, although their role is minimal in comparison to their later outings. They are relegated to a bunch of one-liners. That honestly does make the movie that much better. We can argue about whether their expanded roles in future Kevin Smith movies added to them at, but hell, they at least got their own swear-fest out of it.
What this movie did for me was to expand on penchant for conversation. I now regularly throw words into my speech that tend to throw people off and give of an aura of intelligence that has yet to be proven real or false by myself or anyone else that I have attempted to fool. I have the talent of bullshiting my way through conversation and I have this movie to thank for that. I constantly will steer the topic towards simultaneously inane and insane topics that don't matter in the grand scheme of things, or happen to even be relevant to my existence.
Clerks 2 was shit. It killed the spirit of the first film and was basically a re-hash of Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back mixed with a little bit of the magic that made Clerks what it is. Clerks is a great film, it really is. You will fail if you even attempt to try to recreate that. And even the father of this great film, Kevin Smith himself, couldn't do that. You can't fuck with this movie. You just can't. It's been a good 4 years since I last watched it. I love it, but maybe I've seen it too many times. I can't even count. So fuck it. If you haven't seen it, then you need to. I highly recommend watching the original cut included on the Clerks X DVD set. It's better than the final product, albeit a rough and unfinished version.
What did Clerks contribute to society? Nothing really. It's all about 90 minutes of entertainment. But there's one thing that stands out...I always end up in a conversation with whomever my current girlfriend is at the time about the men (or women) they've slept with. It always goes that way. This conversation is inevitable. Particularly "how many"...I always reply "In a row". And if she asks you first, you answer and that's her reply, you have found yourself a keeper. That's Clerks' contribution to society...A dick joke that never gets old.
