Wednesday, January 18, 2012

Day 273 - Clerks

Clerks (1994) directed by Kevin Smith




"Wait, what is that anyway, something like 36? Does that include me?!"
"Um... 37."


Despite its cult status, Clerks is not a good movie in the traditional sense. It is crude and vulgar, has low production value, terrible acting and obviously scripted and unnatural dialogue. That does not mean, however, that it is a bad movie. On the contrary, despite how rough it is around the edges, Clerks comes out as very funny, surprisingly thoughtful and a testament to the slacker generation.

The film follows Dante who comes into work at the convenience store on his day off. It is a soul sucking dead end job that is too depressing to even think about. There he encounters a wide variety of characters that come into the store, none more frequent than his best friend Randal who works at the video store next door. The video store that he works at is so bad that he has to go to another store to rent his videos. The two slackers engage in endless banter and philosophical musings, my favorite being Randal's thoughts on Return of the Jedi. He correctly points out that the yet completed Death Star must have had a bunch of innocent workers working on it when the rebels blow it up. It is the type of random observations me and my roommates would often get into in college.

The dialogue of the film, while witty and often funny, is also obviously written. Nothing the characters say flow naturally and sound like, well, something you would write down and say. It is not helped by the very amateurish acting. Brian O'Halloran as Dante is actually quite passable. He plays the beat down loser pretty well. Jeff Anderson as Randal is pretty awful. I don't know if it his delivery (which sounds like he is reading) or the words that come out of the character's mouth because there is no way this guy would really say these things or sound the way he sounds in real life.

Despite all that, I can't help but laugh because the film is really funny and like I said, it reminds me of the conversations I used to have at 3:00 am at Jack in the Box with my friends. Everything about the film is crude and seems put together on a shoestring budget, but most directors/writers would be lucky to have a film like Clerks in their catalogue. There is a rawness and energy to it that is palpable and makes you admire the film despite its flaws.

Grade: B+

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