Cinema - Clerks 2

In 1994 24-year-old Kevin Smith made a movie set in the smalltown New Jersey store he had been working in. It cost him $27,000 to produce, and it captured the absurdity and profanity of no-future twentysomething life so well it became a surprise smash hit, turning its director into a big player and kick-starting the mid-nineties indie boom. Clerks was a masterpiece: a hugely flawed, poorly acted, clunkily filmed hour and a half of abdomen-endangering laughter with a nihilistic edge.

Twelve years on, and Smith is a major player, with a couple of hits (Chasing Amy, Dogma) and a palpable miss (Jersey Girl) under his belt - all set in New Jersey, all exploring the same offbeat territory (which the director calls his ‘view-askewniverse’). It’s a strange move then to go back to the same cast of his original film to make a sequel. The main protagonists of Clerks, Dante and Randal, have moved sideways in the world, the now have a McJob flipping burgers in a fast-food chain. Dante’s planning to go to Florida to marry his fiancée and get a job in her dad’s car-washing business - Randal, distraught to be losing his best buddy, tries to persuade him to stay. The movie won a standing ovation in Cannes, and a predictably mixed response from the critics. Smith uses the same formula: trash culture references and foul-mouthed fantasies abound as the characters try to make sense out of their unfulfilling lives in the course of a star-crossed day. ‘X’ hits the spot? Whatever. DL