I took this challenge on this year to make myself watch movies that I’ve missed out on or maybe would never watch unless I had a reason to see it. I’ve accomplished that a few times already and I have many more to get through. The other part of this is I want to revisit and hopefully bring to light for others who may have missed them, but find that I have similar taste in films. Clerks, which has 88% on Rotten Tomatoes, is one of my all time favorite films by one of my favorite writer/directors.
Dante Hicks (Brian O’Halloran) and Randal Graves (Jeff Anderson) are clerks at a convenient store and adjacent video store in New Jersey. The film shows the day in their life dealing with annoying customers, talking about movies, and dealing with their love lives.
The first Kevin Smith movie I saw was Mallrats. I found a kinship with Brodie as I was a mallrat myself. I then saw Jay and Silent Bob strikes back while in college and I realized I really found this guy Kevin Smith’s movies to be funny. I decided to dive into them and soon became a big fan of his writing and directing.
Kevin Smith movies aren’t for everyone. He’s vulgar, references drug use, and often discusses topics that only other nerds would be able to relate to. However, I love his ability to have interesting, well-scripted dialogue scenes. His movies are often character films that focus heavily on the relationships between them and often feature plots of little consequence (with the exception of Dogma) to the world outside of the characters own interests. That is to say, the films rarely offer issues more than those concerning the characters, but they make for fun journeys with interesting themes and motifs occurring from time to time.
Randal is one of my favorite Kevin Smith characters as he often does and says things to customers that any former retail employee would love to have said to that annoying individual. One of my favorite scenes has Randal reading a newspaper while sitting on the video store counter. A customer tries to get his opinion on two VHS tapes with Randal saying things like “I don’t watch movies” in response. She gets irritated and tricks him into proving he isn’t even paying attention to her and Randal turns it around on her saying “I don’t appreciate your ruse.” The scene always cracks me up and it’s one I show to people who work in customer service every chance I get.
Clerks it the ultimate indie success story as it’s been reported that Smith made it for under $40,000 and then sold it to Miramax at Sundance for a million. The praise he received at the festival put him on the map propelled his career forward. It’s inspirational for aspiring filmmakers as he had a vision for a story and made it happen with the tools available to him.
I’ve seen the movie dozens of times and every time I watch it I think I enjoy it a little more. The jokes still make me laugh, the production values for a young filmmaker are impressive, and the dialogue feels organic (with the exception of Veronica [Marilyn Ghigliotti] who sometimes sounds like she’s just trying to finish her scene as quickly as possible). I definitely think Clerks is a Must Watch for film lovers everywhere…just make sure there aren’t any impressionable ears in range of the speakers.
Berkreviews.com 