Shop-stop

An incredibly inexpensive film, when Kevin Smith used his experience from working in a shop and wrote a script based on crude humor and bizarre characters of urban slackers, street dealers, and misfits of all kinds. The plot is not important, what matters are the dialogues filled with slang, vulgarisms, and an incredible cadence of various phrases and mostly well-functioning jokes. Thanks to this film, Smith became a recognized icon of the American independent scene and could afford to launch the production of provoking, disrespectful, and in many ways provocative films in a grand style. Clerks is certainly not a perfect film, the technical quality is poor, but it has so much energy, courage, and non-conformity in it that I forgive it for many more things. Overall impression 95%. (2006.06.15)

Well, I expected more for sure. I didn’t have any fits of laughter, I only laughed rather sporadically. Kevin Smith’s script turns blabbering about nothing into dialogues with a cult status, but I prefer conversations that are funny in a bit smarter way. I hope that the second part leaves a better impression. (2008.09.14)

An overturned coffin with an ex-girlfriend or a story about a broken neck during oral sex in a car is truly funny when presented by Smith, but especially in the first half, the dialogues of the characters suffer from self-interest syndrome without a drop of wit or any shift in the plot. It would have been better to push the envelope more using dry humor (which Smith later proved he could do brilliantly), or to let the life wisdom surface at a lower cadence and in a more natural way, rather than bolting it on to episodic scenes with store visitors. It’s definitely entertaining, but Smith proved his virtuosity later. (2006.11.12)

I’m somehow missing the “genius” of this film. Lots of verbal wadding, punchlines that are easily guessed in advance in most scenes, infantile sexually tinged dialogues (a girl outwitting 36 guys or an attempted self-oral resulting in death certainly didn't tear my diaphragm), even the life observations seem miss the mark. The only thing that was amusing was the presence of the cool Jason Mewes aka Jay and his "dance". I can't even believe that the smart and funny Dogma is by the same creator. PS: Fortunately, the sequel Clerks 2 is considerably better. (2006.08.19)

For the umpteenth time, I've never understood why audiences love a movie that can't be funny and so has to resort to reaching for the bottom. But here I don't get it at all! They put a couple of greasy-haired ponytails behind the counter. They tell them to spout one old bullshit after another and talk dirty. When they had nowhere left to go, they started getting lame (really lame) about sex... and for what? Kevin Smith may be all things... just not a god. (2011.03.28)