Clerks III

Year 15, Day 158 - 6/7/23 - Movie #4,459

BEFORE: Still up in Massachusetts, I got to visit my mother today in the physical rehab facility she's in, then we took my father out for lunch, and after that went back and spent more time with my mother. She's got dementia, so sometimes she doesn't know where she is or how she got there or even what month it is (she asked me if it was February yet) but this is her cycle, every few months she needs to go to the hospital, then it's a few weeks in rehab once they get her swelling down, then she goes back to the senior living apartment with my father, then they've got four or five months before her health problems flare up again. This is just how it's going to be for the rest of her life, it seems, however long that is.  I come up and visit her when I can, but usually that's just two or three times a year, I'm sad to report.  It brings me down to see her like this, but there's just not much I can do for her but visit - and keep in contact with my sister so that we coordinate our visits for different months, so collectively we can check in on her more times. 

Ethan Suplee carries over from "Dog".

FOLLOW-UP TO: "Clerks II" (Movie #4), "Jay and Silent Bob Reboot" (Movie #3,663)

THE PLOT: Dante, Elias, Jay and Silent Bob are enlisted by Randall, after his heart attack, to make a movie about the convenience store that started it all.

AFTER: Well, I'm torn on this one - because look how eager I was to watch "Clerks II", it was the FOURTH movie I watched when I started this blog. The only movies that took priority included "Star Wars: The Clone Wars" and "Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull". That's how I roll - er, rolled, back in 2009.  I couldn't WAIT to watch the sequel to "Clerks", one of the all-time classics.  A lot has changed since then, and I got burned so badly by "Jay and Silent Bob Reboot", not to mention "Yoga Hosers", that I went in this time with some trepidation.  Oh, I still programmed it, first chance I got, because Kevin Smith is a must-watch, but I just was not expecting a fantastic movie. Hell, I didn't even remember what happened in "Clerks II", it was either that long ago or that non-memorable. (Maybe both.)

But watching (or remembering) what happened in "Clerks II" isn't exactly required - I figured I'd catch up on whatever I didn't remember, and I was right.  Dante almost got married in that film, but then he found out that the co-worker he had an affair with was pregnant, so he ditched the marriage to the rich but mean lady in favor of the nice and poor one.  Did he make the right choice, in the end?  Well, nobody can really say, but this film felt the need pretty early to catch us up on Dante's current situation. No spoilers here. 

What this film makes clear (and really, maybe it should have been clear from the start) is that Kevin Smith might PLAY Silent Bob, but that doesn't mean he IS Silent Bob, or that Silent Bob is based on him.  If anything, since we all know that Smith once worked at a convenience store, it's more likely that the character of Dante is based on him.  Or maybe Randall - hell, maybe every character is based on him, in the same way that you are all the characters in your dreams at night, and they are all you. So when Randall has a heart attack early in the film, it makes sense, because Kevin Smith also had a heart attack a few years ago.  Randall's brush with death makes him think about his life, what he has, and hasn't, accomplished so far. 

But then, this creates a very meta problem - Randall decides that he wants to become a filmmaker (just like Kevin Smith did) and make a film about the weird and funny things that have happened at the Quick Stop over the years (just like Kevin Smith did).  And you guessed it, Randall, with the help of Dante and others, ends up making a black-and-white film that looks almost exactly like "Clerks".  Hell, it IS "Clerks", only a version of "Clerks" that exists within the world of "Clerks", and this reminds me of how in the Marvel Comic-book universe, there are also comic books that are made about Spider-Man and the Fantastic Four.  This shouldn't be the case, because in a world where there ARE real super-heroes, there should be no need for comic books with them, because people can just look outside the window and see them.  Stan Lee and the other Marvel writers and artists couldn't resist writing themselves into the storyline, though, so it was explained that within the comic-book world, the heroes licensed their likenesses to an alternate version of Marvel Comics, though one assumes that they left out important information like Spider-Man's secret identity.

My point is, this SHOULDN'T work - there should be no need for the movie "Clerks" within the storyline of "Clerks", but now it's been added, after the fact.  It doesn't work because Smith re-used some of the actual footage from the first "Clerks" movie, and the characters were thirty years younger then, so the old footage is just never going to look quite right.  I get the sentiment, but then we've got a case where the art is now going to imitate life, rather than the other way around, and it's all just a bit too self-referential.  The tone is a big difference, too, because Smith was serious about the storyline of "Clerks", and there were NO in-jokes in that first movie, but now the third movie is almost nothing BUT in-jokes.  Characters frequently break the fourth wall and the movie seems always conscious that it IS a movie, so it becomes impossible to take it seriously as a narrative. Right?

I also didn't remember the "Ethan" character from "Clerks II" - I now realize he was there, but he was so forgettable in the second film that I really had to start from scratch again with him here in the third film.  Then to suddenly meet him again for the first time, be reminded that he's Super-Christian religious, but then five minutes later he converts to Satanism, well, it's all a bit much.  Everything here is a bit much, for that matter.  I got SOME of the in-jokes, like when Randall was talking to his doctor about the "Star Wars" show "The Mandalorian", and she's not already aware of the show BUT the actress playing the doctor has a recurring role on that same show, I get that, it's quite funny.  But then every character here having a bad reaction to how they're portrayed in the movie-within-a-movie, well, that's just the same joke over and over again, isn't it?

My other point is, there's already a documentary that was made about the making of "Clerks", did we also need to see a fictionalized version of that same process in "Clerks III"?  I'm going to say that we did not. I'm glad that we could check in with SOME of the characters here, like it makes perfect sense that Jay and Silent Bob would be running a weed store, because there's like one on every corner now in some states. But I still just with Kevin Smith would stop making the same damn movie, over and over. 

Also starring Brian O'Halloran (last seen in "Jay and Silent Bob Reboot"), Jeff Anderson (last seen in "Zack and Miri Make a Porno"), Jason Mewes (last seen in "George Carlin's American Dream"), Kevin Smith (last seen in "Jagged"), Trevor Fehrman (last seen in "Clerks II"), Austin Zajur (last seen in "Fist Fight"), Rosario Dawson (last heard in "Space Jam: A New Legacy"), Amy Sedaris (last seen in "Adrienne"), Marilyn Ghigliotti (also last seen in "Jay and Silent Bob Reboot"), Jennifer Schwalbach Smith (ditto), Harley Quinn Smith (ditto), Marc Bernardin (ditto), Michelle Buteau (last seen in "Isn't It Romantic"), Kate Micucci (last seen in "When in Rome"), Justin Long (last seen in "For a Good Time, Call..."), John Willyung (also last seen in "Jay and Silent Bob Reboot"), Mike Zapcic (ditto), Bryan Johnson (ditto), Walter Flanagan( ditto), Ming Chen (ditto), Ernest O'Donnell (ditto), Jordan Monsanto (ditto), Logan Mewes (ditto), Schott Schiaffo (ditto), Scott Mosier, Vincent Pereira, Michael Belicose, Yassir Lester, Gail Stanley (also last seen in "Clerks II"), Byron Stanley (ditto), Robert Hawk, Joe Bagnole, Uncle Wayne, Scott Purcell, Betsy Broussard, Virginia Smith, Frances Cresci, Donna Jeanne Bagnold, Thomas Burke, Thomas Burke Jr., Kimberly Gharbi, Christian Cordes, Derek Berry, Nate Gonzales, AnnaMarie Brown, Liz Priestley (last seen in "Concrete Cowboy"), Anthony Perry, Shane Kalman, with cameos from Ben Affleck (last seen in "The Last Duel"), Fred Armisen (last seen in "The Sparks Brothers"), Sarah Michelle Gellar (last seen in "She's All That"), Freddie Prinze Jr. (last seen in "Down to You"), Bobby Moynihan (also last seen in "When in Rome"), Melissa Benoist (also last seen in "Jay and Silent Bob Reboot"), Chris Wood (ditto), Ralph Garman (ditto), Grace Smith (ditto), Anthony Michael Hall (last seen in "Results"), Danny Trejo (last seen in "Muppets Haunted Mansion"), Brian Quinn, Sal Vulcano, James Murray, Joe Gatto, Donnell Rawlings (last seen in "Bitchin': The Sound and Fury of Rick James"), Jake Richardson (last seen in "Cinema Verite").

RATING: 6 out of 10 hockey sticks