Clerks III

For me, Clerks II was a turning point in Kevin Smith’s career. Positively, it was the first movie he made where I really felt he finally arrived at telling his kind of story while balancing real human emotion and rich narrative arcs. I’ll go to the grave thinking Clerks II is superior to Clerks as a film. It’s richer, smarter, deeper, and more resonant. But it also marks a turning point where he stopped simply making movies and started making calculated movies that tried to fit in a box. Zack and Miri was trying to latch onto the 2000’s Judd Apatow-style comedies. Red State was “I can do something other than a comedy”. Cop Out lived up to its title, and Jay & Silent Bob Reboot was trying to win back street cred. Only movies like Tusk and Yoga Hosers seemed original, but they were so for the View Askew cult, outsiders needed not to apply. I say all this because I had a lot of mixed feelings going into Clerks III. I didn’t know what Kevin Smith I’d get. And I’d say now that Clerks III is a mix of all the Kevin Smiths we’ve seen, good and bad. On the plus side, Clerks III sticks to that lane of maturity he was showing in Clerks II. That movie dealt with the identity crisis of “oh shit I’m in my 30’s I haven’t become an adult yet what the hell am I supposed to do” that Gen-X ran into. Clerks III is the natural extension of that — the mid-life crisis that comes with the sudden confrontation of one’s mortality. For Randal, it’s a heart attack. For Dante, it’s mourning his late wife and unborn daughter and not being able to move on 15 years later. Just like C2, C3 handles these topics honestly; Dante has bottled up his emotions, only facing them in private. Randal can’t let the mask slip at all and dives headlong into a project with selfish and reckless abandon. Confronting these demons also means confronting each other on some things. Other movies might be more artful, but Smith is more down to earth. The conversations feel real, whether they’re positive or negative. The humor is also very much in the Smith vein, although far less dick-and-fart obsessed, and I’m grateful for that. All in all, it is mostly fun, not terribly funny but definitely amusing and entertaining. But C3 also has some of Smith’s bad tendencies. Like Jay & Silent Bob Reboot, this movie isn’t made for anybody to just walk in and watch it. You don’t just gotta know Smith’s movies, you gotta LOVE them, because this movie relies heavily on references to the previous two movies (and subtle shout outs to other movies in his filmography). In that regard, the movie is a little too inside baseball, and it’s kind of proud of it, which is a bit off putting. Worse, though, is that the central point of the movie hurts the movie. Randal’s idea is to make a movie, and the movie he wants to make is … Clerks. Like, the original movie. It’s cool that they got almost everybody back, right down to bit players like the Chewley’s Gum rep. But the movie spends a lot of time — A LOT OF TIME — recreating these scenes. It weighs down the middle section quite a bit, and while it all builds to the big third act twist, there’s just too much of it. A couple minutes of Kevin Smith’s own real life health crisis turned into a meta-joke about Randal’s all-consuming narcissism is plenty; a half hour of it is self-indulgent and slows the movie down at a point when it needs to be ramping up. But the biggest flaw is that, while this movie is honest and bittersweet and touching and a love letter to the fans … it isn’t very rewatchable. While C2 deals with themes of finding one’s identity and mid-30’s malaise and male platonic love, it also has lots of jokes. Funny jokes. Its funny on its own and as a continuation of the first movie. C3 is a well made movie, it’s a good movie, but it’s not a terribly funny movie, and the last act takes a serious turn to dramatic that 1) Smith isn’t quite adept enough to handle, and 2) ends the movie in a way that makes rewatching it a dicey proposition. It just sucks the air out of the room, which is a weird thing to do at the end of a comedy. Or a trilogy. Or a comedy trilogy. So, in the end, would I recommend Clerks III? Yes. It definitely doesn’t stack up to 1 and 2, but it is good. It’s Smith’s best movie since Clerks II. If you enjoyed the first two, it’s a fitting way to bring the curtain down on these characters. But I also would say not to expect rushing out and getting the Blu-Ray. You’ll be glad you watched it, I think, but I think you’re likely not to come back to it.