Clerks III (2022 | USA | 100 minutes | Kevin Smith)
Aside from The Producers and [redacted], I don’t think another movie has had more of an impact on how I think and talk than the first Clerks movie. I’ve had time off requests get lost in the ether and when things typically go south, I have said “I wasn’t even supposed to be here today” more times than Count von Count can count. And if I can’t think of a movie title, I’ll refer to it as “that one with the guy who was in that movie was out last year.” It’s not something profound or witty, necessarily, but the movie came out when I was an impressionable fifteen and it’s stuck with me for a long time.
Some twenty-eight years later, Kevin Smith has brought the characters of Randal and Dante (Brian O’Halloran and Jeff Anderson) back for a third movie. They now own the convenience store but look mostly the same. They still play hockey on the roof and still have signs up assuring you they’re open and asking to be alerted if you plan on shoplifting. Jay and Silent Bob are still hanging out in front of the video store (they run) but now they sell weed from it, with only slightly more legitimacy. The movie is, like a bag of Cheetos or a can of Red Bull or a lukewarm flauta, empty calories, unnecessary but completely comforting.
The plot, if one is necessary, is that Randal had a near death experience in the convenience store and he wants to make a movie about his life when he recovers. Kevin Smith, it should be noted, also had his own brush with mortality not long ago. The problem is that his entire life revolves around funny things that happened in and around the convenience store with him and/or Dante.
There are a lot of terrific cameos in the movie, including Amy Sedaris, Ben Affleck, Fred Armisen, and Sarah Michelle Geller. They’re all very funny. I know a bunch of other reviews have said this, but this movie does feel like a family reunion. It’s almost certainly too self-referential for its own good. A lot of the script feels like ways to bring back other characters from the Kevin Smith Extended Cinematic Universe.
For whatever breadcrumbs and easter eggs Smith and his long-time cronies throw at you (and I ate up every one of them), Clerks III is a movie about bros and friendships. I watched it while stuck in isolation in my bedroom in the middle of a (luckily minor) bout of COVID-19 and didn’t realize it was too late to stop the tears that it was something I needed at that time. It’s not even the dumbest 2022 movie about dumb dudes and their dumber friends I loved but it was a reunion I was thrilled to be invited to. IYKYK.
Clerks III is currently in theaters through Fathom Events and Kevin Smith will be in Seattle for two screenings at the Neptune on September 25 and 26.