"CLERKS"

At first it’s hard to tell how this shit became such a phenomenon. It’s on really grainy film, a lot of the scenes are done from one camera angle, and in some of the outdoor scenes you can’t even tell what’s going on. But then they start talking.
It’s charming, basically. The movie has a kind of charm that must have seemed a lot fresher in 1993, before color stock and Ben Affleck made Kevin Smith go overboard such that there was no more charm, only irritation. But this is him doing what he does best. What does that consist of? What was it about this film?
There could be many answers. One—if you do it right, the “humble duo encountering bizarre situations” thing can totally endear an audience to your film (see: Harold and Kumar Go To White Castle). And that’s definitely here—the anti-smoking guy, the egg inspecting guy, the creepy old guy who asks to use the toilet. Two—people seem to sometimes define this movie by the slacker attitude the two leads adopt. I think one of the taglines was “Just cause they serve you, doesn’t mean they like you,” or some shit. It’s true, the way they treat their customers is shocking and funny, and inviting--how much they just don’t care. Sure, that’s appealing, but by no means do I find it to be the “freshest” or “hippest” thing about the movie. Three—the dialogue. The fact that these kids are almost poets about their shitty station in life endears us to them even more; it’s like they’re smart enough to analyze their dead-end lives but not do something about them, and the same could probably be said for a lot of kids too. Four—there’s just something more honest here than in other Smith movies. Both in the characters and the ethic endorsed. The slackerness can not exist in half-assed form. What I mean is that Dante is apathetic but still has glimmers of allegiance to his responsibilities as a clerk. In turn, nearly everything goes wrong for him. Randall, on the other hand, could not care less, and no harm ever comes to him. But this means more than just comedy at Dante’s expense. The tension between Dante’s oppositional impulses to care and not care extend to his love life, and that’s where there’s a real honesty that you won’t find in Mallrats and certainly not Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back. He is split between staying with the girl who adores him, out of comfort, and getting with the one who did him wrong, cause she’s the one he really loves. The lecture that Randall gives to him illuminating this fact is at the heart of a scene that has more emotional depth than maybe anything else Smith has ever made.
But there are a lot of episodes revolving around dicks and dead people that you have to wade through to get there. That’s not a bad thing; it just means that the movie never takes itself too seriously.
On second viewing, what sticks out is just how dark this film is; how much Smith needs to punish his less ethically ambivalent character. Perhaps we need Dante to pay for both his and Randall’s sins. As a character that the audience might not like if he was content, he must go through hell. It strikes me now that perhaps the name “Dante” wasn’t an accidental choice on Smith’s part. I’m probably one of the last people to pick up on that.