Kevin Smith’s Clerks III cashes in on nostalgia—at a dispiriting cost
Smith returns to his Askewniverse with an all-too-familiar story about growing older that does a disservice to its characters and, in turn, the audience
Film Reviews Clerks
There’s a watchable 90-minute movie hidden in the almost two-hour runtime of Clerks III. It’s too bad writer-director Kevin Smith doesn’t possess the clarity of vision he once had to refine ideas well enough to let his narrative do the talking. Instead, he explains over the end credits what this film should’ve been: a tribute to those who inspired what has become a trilogy. Had he made this third chapter in the Quick-Stop Groceries “saga” a self-reflexive exploration of his beloved, acerbic clerks negotiating an angst-riddled world that’s risen up to not only meet but reward their snarky standards, we’d all be the better for it. Instead, he delivers a sad-sack iteration that fails to deliver emotionally earned closure to characters who should triumph over their tribulations.
Sixteen years after Dante Hicks (Brian O’Halloran) and his sardonic bestie Randal Graves (Jeff Anderson) bought and restored their former workplace, the duo remains behind the counter serving up unwanted sass to their quirky clientele. Local burnouts Jay (Jason Mewes) and Silent Bob (Smith) continue to be a lingering presence, hanging outside the mini-mart. On the surface, life has seemingly stayed the same, yet they’ve all experienced significant gains and losses. Randal turned his bankrupt video rental store into a successful weed dispensary, but Dante’s been dealt an unlucky hand, failing to heal his anguish over the sudden, accidental deaths of his wife Becky (Rosario Dawson) and young daughter. His friendship with Randal has persevered, but it’s about to be put through its greatest test.
Randal, after intensely bickering with Bible-thumping, NFT-dealing employee Elias (Trevor Fehrman), collapses on the floor of the store. He’s in the throes of a heart attack, sending Elias into a flurry of worried prayer and leaving Dante vulnerable due to his previous trauma of losing loved ones. The emergency, live-saving stent put into Randal’s heart gives him an epiphany: instead of being an observer of movies, he’s going to make one about his life. Hijinks and some hilarity ensue as he writes, casts and films what becomes the movie we know as Clerks.
Series continuity is observed only when convenient for Smith. The refurbished store’s financial woes don’t quite line up with the ending of Clerks II (where perpetual slackers Jay and Silent Bob saved the day), a choice orchestrated primarily to bring back his constant collaborator and real-life wife Jennifer Schwalbach Smith, playing Dante’s bitchy ex-fiancé, Emma. While he recycles Dante’s perpetual struggle of feeling stagnant and frustrated, he betrays the character’s essence, surprisingly not allowing his aggrieved creation to grow as he has continually done so in the past. It’s depressing.
Worse, Smith regurgitates similar third-act beats from the film’s 2006 predecessor, which not only feels redundant, but highlights a desperate need for overarching commentary in the meta-context of the franchise. Randal’s tasked to relearn the same exact lesson about his friendship with Dante as before, this time with less finesse. It’s a watered-down redux of their friction in both Clerks and Clerks II, whose narrative poignancy gets undercut by unfunny jokes and gags. Meanwhile, “fridging” the franchise’s lead female to give a male character an arc feels like an especially wrong-headed and insincere move.
While the filmmaker stocks the picture with callbacks and references in his patented style (don’t worry, there’s even more dialogue about obscure Star Wars characters), actually funny jokes are few and far between. A revolving door of cameos from Sarah Michelle Gellar, Melissa Benoist, and Ben Affleck, amongst others, perks up the proceedings, offering a respite from a second act plateau of energy. He also relies heavily on soundtrack cues, including My Chemical Romance’s “Welcome To The Black Parade,” Jefferson Starship’s “Find Your Way Back,” and John Gorka’s “I’m From New Jersey,” to augment his phony emotional catharses.
Smith’s insights into aging and nostalgia mask a noticeable, dispiriting inability to engage with their finer points, something he’s done previously. It’s admirable that he keeps these guys relegated to their Jersey bubble, but we’re living in an era full of Dantes and Randals, and by now they feel cliché, not comforting. Though Smith and his collaborators seem eager to reunite us thoughtfully with these surly Gen-Xers during their respective midlife crises, their efforts could use a lot more polish. Ultimately, the absence of any meaningful sentiment about grief or personal growth (or anything else) makes the story’s maddening, rote familiarity feel especially lazy—which is why Clerks III lives up to the legacy of its uninspired characters in all of the wrong ways.
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“Nostalgia” as in, hey, remember back in the day when Kevin Smith made good movies? Maybe we should watch one of those instead.
Kevin Smith never made good movies. I liked Clerks at the time before Mallrats made me reevaluate how much I had liked it. Chasing Amy is diabolically bad, the bit where Keven Smith stops the film to masturbate in front of the camera especially. Dogma is just a bunch of lifted anti-religious jokes from the adult comics of the early 90’s told not as well, and then he actually manages to go down hill from there. His comic work even more so.
I can’t resent the guy, and I don’t even dislike him at all as a person. He expertly carved out a niche catering to the section of Gen X who loved comics and weed who then also loved that they now had a voice who told the same jokes they did so good for him as in that at least he excelled. I just think his actual work is bad.
IIRC Kevin Smith already did the metafictional “OMG they’re actually kind of making Clerks!” thing in Zack and Miri (well, kind of).
Also his last good film.
Gosh it’s like he’s had nothing to say for decades but opportunity to say it, so why not.
Yeah, but it’s better this time. (I hated Zack & Miri.)
You can’t go home again.Killing off two characters, especially those two sounds exceedingly grim.
this, and it also reinforces the almost comical dissonance of Brian O’Halloran being married to someone who looks like Rosario Dawson LOL.
Well hey sometimes you hit the lottery lol.
Geoffrey Arend was married to Christina Hendricks. It happens sometimes.
Oh yeah it certainly does heck just look at the women Pete Davidson has dated LOL.
Yeah but he has money
On 100% money makes men and women for that matter SEEM much more attractive/desirable than they would if they didn’t have money/fame. It’s kind of like the joke I have about the “ratio” the more attractive a person, man or woman, is the more BS a significant other is willing to put up with.
Yes, but that’s because Pete Davidson has an enormous cock.If the rumors are true, I should add. But it does seem like the only plausible explanation.
As a woman, I just want to say in general men give WAY too much credit to cocks. Sure, women want a normal penis but NONE of my females friends have EVER, EVER been like “well he wasn’t cute or rich or nice but what an enormous cock! Couldn’t keep away!”Pete Davidson is (subjectively) funny. He seems to love his mom. He’s confident. We’re talking about that sh*(t WAY more than in the locker room.
LOL yeah as a guy I always though it was funny. Like unless you have a tiny dick, much less than average, why does it even matter. Ralphie May had a skit about dudes with a HUGE dick.
True. And a big dick IS a plus for some women lol. Money and fame go a LONG way in making a person more “attractive”
I think this is a misconception. Grande said he had “big dick ENERGY”, not that he had, in fact, a big dick. Others may have said otherwise at this point, I dunno. I try to keep my brain as free as possible of Pete Davidson dick news.
You mean Pete “Horse Dick” Davidson?
That’s one way to look at it, but wasn’t Rosario Dawson the one thing everyone liked about CII?
She was great in that movie, — she’s great in everything, essentially — but I was constantly distracted by her presence there. She just didn’t seem like she belonged in that grimy, lo-fi universe. It would have been appropriate if Clerks II had been shot entirely in black and white, like the first one, except for Rosario Dawson, who would be the only character shot in color.
That would’ve indeed been something.
Because, outside of the cameos, she’s the only member of the core cast that’s a genuine star. She’s great, as always, but her presence gives off bigtime “Why is Rosario Dawson slumming it in this crap?” vibes.
It’s kind of a cop-out to say she’s too good for the material, but she’s 100000000000000000000% too good for that material.
wasn’t Rosario Dawson the one thing everyone liked about CII Yes, though for me there was another. “There’s only one ‘Return’, okay, and it ain’t ‘of the King’, it’s ‘of the Jedi’.”FACTS
you got a problem with interracial couples?
the almost comical dissonance of Brian O’Halloran being married to someone who looks like Rosario DawsonOn screen, sure. We’re a vain viewership. But IRL I’ve seen more seemingly mismatched couples who, when We the Viewers look below the surface, weren’t mismatched at all.
oh sure, I’ve seen mismatched couples like that, they definitely exist, BUT it’s still a little puzzling when you see one spouse is scorching hot and the other…isn’t LOL. It’s like, does the non-hot one have just an incredible personality? A beast in bed? What’s the glue that brought them together and keeps them together? I think about other peoples’ lives far too much LOL.
Yeah, like…the FUCK?
That feels like some straight up CAD Loss level bullshit. I’m sorry a dead wife and kid IN CLERKS!?!
HOW CAN THIS BE?!
Honestly, finding out about that just killed any interest in the film for me. Dawson’s reactions to everything made Clerks II worth it
Wasn’t Clerks originally supposed to have a really grim ending where one of them is killed in a robbery?
It’s one of those alternate endings that comes out of left field and is genuinely agreed would have ruined the rest of the film (the alternative ending to Alien where you hear Ripley making contact with a rescue vessel as the camera slowly pans to the front of her escape ship only to reveal that Ripley’s dead and the Alien is mimicking her voice to lure more victims and the cut of Little Shop of Horrors that’s closer to the stage production with Audrey and Seymour dying and Audrey II and its offspring conquering the Earth are two other famous ones).
Maybe he should have learned early on, “Oh, people really like the whole nerdy stoners having relationship troubles and talking about morbid Star Wars fan theories and the two silly drug dealers and not the grimdark death and murder shit.” I get that loss and tragedy is important for drama, but things need to feel organic. Losing a parent, sibling, or even ex-girlfriend? That would work fine for a Kevin Smith film. Even a wife alone could work. But making a character a grieving husband and father just feels needlessly dark.
Wasn’t Clerks originally supposed to have a really grim ending where one of them is killed in a robbery?YES. You can still find the original ending, maybe on YouTube? I know I’ve seen it. And yes, it ruins the rest of the movie even if it is also meant as a dark take on “I wasn’t even supposed to be here today!” But by the end of the movie we like Dante and the original ending just sours the entire movie for me. I’m glad he changed it.
Yeah. I think one of the trailers mentions that Dante dies at the end of the movie Randall is shooting.
Series continuity is observed only when convenient for Smith.
Continuity? In a Askewniverse movie?The last one (Jay and Silent Bob Reboot) showed “Clerks” existed as in-universe movie and featured the cast playing themselves.
The best joke would’ve been AV Club just copy and pasting the Jay and Silent Bob Reboot review given how similar in nostalgia-reliance and general quality they sound.
Jay and Silent Bob Reboot was the worst film I had the misfortune to see in my entire 42 years of existence. I know it might sound like a huge fucking exaggeration in the world where The Room or Birdemic exist, but it is true for me. I have never seen a movie that was this lazy, soulless and had such an enormous contempt for its audience. I know I should’ve turned it off after the first 15 minutes, but I kept on watching it out of morbid curiosity and it got worse and worse with every scene and line of dialogue. I have only myself to blame for watching it until the end, but fuck Kevin Smith for making it. Kevin Smith’s last good movie was Clerks 2 and last watchable movie was Zack and Miri Make a Porno, and even that was not that good. Sounds like the new Clerks movie might even worse than Reboot, which might cause the universe to collapse unto itself due to sheer cosmic power of suckitude.
It’s funny because I’m always bemoaning how people constantly have to make every single thing that comes out “The best movie of all time” or “The very worst show in history,” both descriptors which I’ve seen over and over for pretty much every single movie and TV show of any notoriety whatsoever over the past 5 years. But reading this review I remembered both the aforementioned review of Jay and Silent Bob Reboot and my subsequent decision to go ahead and watch it anyway, and immediately thought that it might very well be the worst film I’ve ever seen. I’m the sort of person who can find enjoyment in pretty much anything I watch, even if it’s not very good. I thought Morbius was fine, and I really liked many intermittent minutes of Rise of Skywalker. But the reboot is somehow so soulless that I’m sort of surprised he didn’t pull an Abed and pray to have God destroy it before it could be released. Maybe he did, and just got no response. Even in that movie, I could find little bits of things I liked, but the movie as a whole is such a waste of time that I might have actually been upset if I’d paid to watch it.Anyway, I might have bothered to watch Clerks 3, but it’s apparently not eligible for A-list, so we’ll see if I even have the energy to even bother downloading or streaming it at a later date.
Kevin Smith knows a lot about movies, it’s too bad that doesn’t translate into his ability as a filmmaker. I really doubt that Kevin Smith would enjoy Kevin Smith movies. He’d probably shit all over them.I’ve never been a fan, but I enjoyed Red State because it wasn’t a Kevin Smith film. Also, skinny Kevin Smith looks like a seven year old kid wearing his dad’s skin. It’s frightening.
Clerks was great. Mallrats was insipid but funny. It was important I saw Chasing Amy in high school, because I got to hear Banky’s awful homophobia and changed my own vocabulary because of that. Dogma has its moments. But the rest of it is pure shit.
Jay & Silent Bob Strike Back is a masterpiece of stupidity. Endlessly quotable and hilarious even today.
This is damned close to how I’d assess the work too; I do wonder if we’re about the same age etc, or if that’s just how one experiences Smith.
I’m 37, so maybe?
In a row?
This is the correct take. It’s a slow downward slide from Clerks that falls off a cliff after Dogma.
I don’t think I’ve ever heard Kevin Smith shit on a film. Granted, I limit my exposure to him talking, but he seems pretty positive about every film he discusses.
“They sent me an Academy screener DVD [of Magnolia] this week. I’ll never watch it again, but I will keep it. I’ll keep it right on my desk, as a constant reminder that a bloated sense of self-importance is the most unattractive quality in a person or their work.”
I remember now. I think there was a dig at Magnolia in Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back as well. Other than this one incident, though, I’ve never heard a negative word about anything else.
Correct. He is almost insipidly positive about other people’s movies. Anyone who says otherwise hasn’t been following his podcasts.
Why do you say Red State is not a Kevin Smith movie? Genuine question, because I wonder how he managed to make a genuinely good movie exactly once in his career.
For that exact reason. Red State was not a Kevin Smith film in its pacing, cinematography, the complete absence of any pop-culture riffing, the acting, the writing, and the overall production. It was like when Clint Eastwood made Jersey Boys. It felt like a film that Kevin Smith may have been on the set for but didn’t feel like making himself so he added his clout and name to get it made. Because he hasn’t hit any of those notes since then and, for any other filmmaker with his track record, hasn’t really tooted the Red State horn much.Guaranteed that if you show that film to anyone who knows Smith and don’t tell them who directed it, they would never be able to guess.Maybe one day we’ll find out that he did a movie swap with another director as a gag, just to see if they could pull it off.
I feel the same way about Tusk, which is another really fun film. I think part of it is trying to make movies about characters who have nothing left to say. You can’t treat aging characters like they live in a cartoon, where nothing actually changes and expect anything fresh coming out of them. Hell, it’s even worse because actual cartoons manage to find something new in their never-aging characters all the time.
Red State was written with absolutely no idea where it was going, with Smith challenging himself to end every scene the second he knew what would happen next.
Red State was not a Kevin Smith film in its… acting, the writing,Mostly agree with the rest, but the last like 5 minutes absolutely scream Kevin Smith.I overall liked Red State and I wish he would step out of his comfort zone a bit more, though I don’t really think it’s *that* good of a film.
I liked Red State as well, but he didn’t really pull it together. Something was missing. I thought Tusk was a good idea and it was pretty bad.
He’s the first guy to admit he’s not a good director. He just loves making movies and that goes a long way in getting us to not mind the flaws so much.
It’s a shame Jersey Girl flopped because i thought he was actually growing as a director when that came out, but since then it’s just been greatest hits rehashes to the point where i don’t even have an urge to see them any more.Honestly, i thought this movie already came out last year, but that might have been a Jay/Silent Bob film
You’re thinking of “Jay & Silent Bob Reboot.” I saw it in Tucson with a live Q&A afterwards with Smith and Jason Mewes. I’m glad I went, enjoyed seeing the film with a raucous crowd, but have had zero desire to ever watch it again. Jason Mewes’ comeback from the hell of drug addiction has been inspiring, but his Jay character is ridiculously one-note. Jay and Silent Bob are fine as a stoner Waldorf & Statler in the other View Askew films, but wear awfully thin in the two movies where they are the lead characters.
Jersey Girl always felt to me like his one attempt at making an “real” movie that wasn’t entirely propped up by his worst impulses as a writer/director…and it failed so hard that he’s seemingly never bothered to put the effort in again. Which is a shame, both because I think the film is solid despite its flaws and because I think when Kevin actually tries (like with Jersey Girl or some of his Flash/Supergirl episodes) he does pretty damn good work.
But, y’know, he’s doing what he wants to do and we don’t have to watch any of it if we don’t want to, so more power to him.
Wait, you enjoyed Red State because it wasn’t a Kevin Smith film…..even though it was written and directed by Kevin Smith……?Or do you mean, it wasn’t a View Askew film and outside his normal shtick?
Yes, it was not like his normal shtick. It’s almost like when David Lynch made “Straight Story” or if Gaspar Noe made a heartwarming family film about kids renting an RV and driving through Canada to find Santa Claus.
I’d love to see that Gaspar Noe flick!
As would I. I’d still eat mushrooms before watching it, just in case.
HA!
Seriously, though, I watched “Irreversible,” and it’s still the most disturbing thing I’ve ever clicked on. Never followed up on him after that, for obvious reasons.
I have not seen Irreversible and I’m kind of afraid to. I watched “Enter the Void” and still haven’t quite recovered. I’m not sure if I enjoyed it as much as felt something, which is rare with films (actual revulsion, fear, sadness). So I liked it and hated it at the same time.
I would recommend his newest film, Vortex, without hesitation. It’s probably one of the best films of last year – not violent, not gory, but horrific nonetheless. No one has made a film this good that addresses the dual terrors of being elderly/having to care for elderly parents when you can barely take care of yourself. It’s a downer for sure, but it stuck with me.
Part of it is him still wearing the clothes he wore before his heart attack. He’s a skinny kid wearing fat kid clothes, like a 7th grader wearing skater clothes a size too big because he thinks it’ll make him look bigger instead of like he’s wearing a tunic. It reminds me of She-Hulk, where the lead character is wearing clothes that are too big for her in anticipation of growing into them.
Man, I thought Red State was his WORST movie up to that point. I guess I haven’t seen Jersey Girl or Cop Out, but Red State is really fucking terrible. It is unidentifiable as a Kevin Smith movie, yes, which is the only positive I could say about it, besides the cast is pretty competent. I watch a fair amount of movies in that general subgenre, and Red State is absolutely one of the worst I’ve ever seen. If anything it made me appreciate his other movies MORE. Not for their technical aspects, sure, but at least they often had at least some humor and humanity to them. Red State is just a really horrible attempt at making some kind of edgy horror thriller ala Green Room, only one of the most ineptly plotted I’ve ever seen, with an ending as bad as Psycho’s infamous coda.
What, specifically, did you dislike about it?
The plot is a disjointed mess, especially the incredibly terrible ending, and it seems to think it’s deeply profound. I dunno. I haven’t seen it since 2012 or so and I fortunately don’t remember it too clearly and can’t find any reviews I wrote at the time. Rereading a plot summary brings some stuff crashing back, like that ending. I do remember viscerally hating it, and I’d gone in expecting to like it (I was a Kevin Smith apologist and also a big horror guy).
Fair enough! I enjoyed it, but art is, as ever, subjective. I’d say it’s worth a re-watch, but really life’s too short to waste on movies you don’t like.
Used to be a big Kevin Smith fan after Clerks and Mallrats (have an autographed poster of that one), but starting with Chasing Amy just felt like he didn’t much else to offer.Hoped maybe his health scare might have given him some perspective, but this sounds like a miserable, ill-conceived flick.
I don’t see it any great repository of knowledge there. He just has a modicum of charm and a gift for the grift after decades of peddling this act.
This is a rare negative review for the film, it seems to have actually landed with critics beyond those who are usually on side with his latter movies.I’ll still be watching it if it comes to town.
I haven’t gone looking for reviews, but I’ve happened upon two – this one and the Washington Post. In comparison to the Post’s review, this was a rave.
A few that popped up on my Twitter timeline were very positive, Empire gave it a solid 3/5 too, and they’ve been brutally honest with his films.It’s not going to be Chasing Amy, Dogma or Red State, I’d love for him to make something that good again, but I also don’t think it’s going to be terrible, if you’re a fan of his work.
“Empire gave it a solid 3/5 too
60% is not “solid”. It’s barely a pass.
FWIW Rotten Tomatoes is 69% overall, but reading the snippets of a lot of the ‘Fresh’ reviews seems like they’re mostly along the lines of “Eh, it’s okay if you’re a Kevin Smith fan.” The Top Critics page is pretty much evenly split between the Fresh reviews and the Rotten reviews, and several of the fresh ones are, again, kind of muted and conditional in praise. Doesn’t really seem like this is the one bum note in a symphony of rave reviews.
Smith films, for about 20 years have been “if you’re a Smith fan you’ll probably like this”.Not for nothing, someone I went to work with went to see Future Crimes at the weekend because he liked Mortensen and had seen a couple of good reviews: he walked out after less than an hour, because he’d never seen a David Cronenberg movie in his life and was really, really, not prepared for what he was in for.There’s an argument to be made that a lot of filmmakers at a certain point in their careers are only preaching to the choir, they’ve found a lane, and audience and they stick with it, even some of the greats.
He liked Mortensen, but had never seen a Cronenberg film? That’s just bizarre to me.
I think he meant he likes LotR.Because I thought, OK you’ve seen Eastern Promises though right, or A History of Violence, those are Cronenberg movies most people will be on board with and probably seen with no knowledge of the director, because they were quite popular.But no.
It’s sort of like saying you like Alec Guinness because you’ve seen Star wars. Or Crispin Glover because you’ve seen Charlie’s Angels.
Yep. IIRC, in a commentary for Jay & Silent Bob Strike Back, he said something like “If you want a movie that’ll make $30M dollars, I’m your guy.”
““If you want a movie that’ll make $30M dollars, I’m your guy.””
I mean sure, if you forget that 11 of his 14 movies didn’t even make that much.
I’m a Kevin Smith fan from way back (and a Monmouth County, NJ resident), and I haven’t enjoyed one of his films since Dogma, and I’ve *tried*. Other than some funny bits in J&SBSB (Will Ferrell, the Good Will Hunting scene) and Clerks II, it’s been pure garbage and recycled cameos for 20 years.
Yeah there are certain directors, where unless your a fan of their work before hand, might make watching one of their movies hit or miss. As you mentioned with Cronenberg, you NEED to be familiar with his work before seeing one of his movies if you are not a fan of his style, body horror and the like. David Fincher is kind of the same, though much less gore, and Smith is kind of the same as well. If you weren’t a fan of his earlier stuff, Clerks, Chasing Amy, Mallrats, etc. your probably not going to be a big fan of this new one either.
Putting David Cronenberg and Kevin Smith in the same sentence in this manner seems…inadvertently overgenerous at best.
Well they are most certainly in different leagues lol. But both are directors who have a kind of style that you either like or don’t. Like you you didn’t like Clerks or Mallrats you unlikely to like any of his other stuff. Same with Cronenberg.
My first thought for an “Eh, if you’re a fan you’ll like it” filmmaker was Wes Anderson, which seems even wilder somehow. But it describes stuff like The French Dispatch and Isle of Dogs perfectly. If you’re a huge fan, you might find something in there.
Smith films, for about 20 years have been “if you’re a Smith fan you’ll probably like this”.Okay, but describing what seems to be a general sentiment of “eh, if you’re a fan you’ll probably like it” asIt seems to have actually landed with critics beyond those who are usually on sideseems, frankly, to be a rather generous stretch. That would suggest that reviewers generally not inclined to Smith’s work are enthusiastic about it, when the overall critical response actually seems kind of okay-to-lukewarm.Certainly, my essential point is that this negative review doesn’t seem as drastically out of step with the dominant critical response as you were suggesting. It’s just a little bit worse.
Certainly, my essential point is that this negative review doesn’t seem as drastically out of step with the dominant critical response as you were suggesting. It’s just a little bit worse.69% on RT right now, that means the negative reviews are literally out of step with the positive ones.
Even leaving aside the generally okay-to-tepid nature of the positive reviews once you look a bit deeper into them, a 69% positive score means that 31% of the reviews are negative — that’s almost a third of them. If a third of the reviews are negative, that’s a minority but not so egregiously small a one that this review is drastically out of step with common consensus. Look, if you like Kevin Smith and want his movies to succeed, fair enough, but trying to act like this review is some kind of outlier because it says it’s kind of bad frankly seems kind of desperate.
Yes we agree, over two thirds of the reviews are not negative.
Wanted to get the last word in but couldn’t come up with an actual counter-argument to what I said, huh?Yeah, I been there too, buddy.
What counter argument, you said it best – fewer than a third of the reviews for the film are negative (making them outliers, to use your term), I’d say, in the scope of a Smith movie, that’s quite the achievement.No one expects him to make the greatest movie of all time, but it’s nice to see him getting good reviews.
No, no my friend, when a third of reviews are negative, the negative reviews are not an outlier, they’re suggestive of a clear trend. A trend in the minority, perhaps, but a trend nonetheless. An outlier is a data point which differs significantly from other observable data points; in a case like this, one or two bad reviews out of 100 where the other 98-99 were all ravingly positive would be considered outliers. A third of reviews being negative when even a large number of the positive reviews are still kind of middling (which, well, you keep overlooking that part for some reason…) still suggests a general trend, even if the negative reviews are a bit further down the axis than the positive ones; if most of the overall reviews are, say, around the 3/5 mark, a substantial amount of reviews reviews that are in the 1/5 or 2/5 wouldn’t usually be considered a drastic enough a deviance from the average to be considered a rare phenomenon. Thing is, you’ve been kind of changing goalposts back and forth here, but if you’d just said from the start that the AV Club were in the critical minority on this one instead of trying to make the, frankly, bullshit claim that “this is a rare negative review”, there’d be no arguing with you.That said, if Kevin Smith is happy with the reviews he’s getting, more power to him.
A trend in the minority…Sort of like a rarity, I like your thinking!
Nope. As an example, if you were in New York City and 31% of the population were throwing bricks at you and trying to beat you up with baseball bats, that would be a minority of the overall population of the city, but you’d look pretty silly trying to claim it’s a rarity (not to mention getting pretty banged up), since that would still be 6.2 million people physically attacking you. Something being in the minority isn’t the same as it being rare.But, well, I’ve wasted enough time on this. Enjoy Clerks III when you see it.
Nope. As an example, if you were in New York City and 31% of the population were throwing bricks at you and trying to beat you up with baseball bats,Another great example of a rarity!
It’s rare that huge mobs of people don’t chase you around throwing bricks and trying to beat you up? I confess, I’m surprised!
At least we’re all on the same page about rarity!
1/100 is a rarity.1/3 is not a rarity.
I’ll even go to bat for the idea Clerks III is the first Smith movie I’ve been interested in seeing in about a decade. Heck, even though the above review is choking on its own bile, they seem to be describing something no worse than Clerks II. I wouldn’t at all be surprised to come back here in 15 years to read a Clerks IV review that says “eh, it’s no Clerks III.”
I wouldn’t at all be surprised to come back here in 15 years to read a Clerks IV review that says “eh, it’s no Clerks III.”We all know Smith is going to out live AVC.
Your argument is solid, & your point is clear. It’s just that….SPOILERSSPOILERSSPOILERSSPOILERSSPOILERS….there ain’t gonna be a Clerks IV.
This is probably true. Though I’ll say, I would not call myself a Cronenberg fan and I absolutely loved Future Crimes. But I was prepared, as you say.
Not for nothing, someone I went to work with went to see Future Crimes at the weekend because he liked Mortensen and had seen a couple of good reviews: he walked out after less than an hour, because he’d never seen a David Cronenberg movie in his life and was really, really, not prepared for what he was in for.There’s an argument to be made that a lot of filmmakers at a certain point in their careers are only preaching to the choir, they’ve found a lane, and audience and they stick with it, even some of the greats.Cronenberg has always been divisive, but few will argue that he isn’t a master of his niche. It’s just a particularly niche niche.Kevin Smith writes pop-culture-laden comedies about slackers and misfits. That’s not a terribly divisive or niche genre to be playing in, he just hasn’t attempted to improve his craft since Chasing Amy, so outside of people who like his very specific characters and universe everyone else gets their fix from other writers/directors who do the same thing better.
…he just hasn’t attempted to improve his craft since Chasing AmyThat’s just not true.Red State was an incredible left turn for him and his work as a for hire director for the CW has been good, and no one would have seen him doing that sort of work a few years back.
It seems the critic here, clearly someone who liked Clerks and Clerks II, is someone who actually likes Smith’s work but finds this fails by comparison. I’m guessing a lot of the “Well, you’ll like it if you like Smith” reviews are by people who actually don’t like his work, but don’t want to smack down one of the industry’s most affable not-really-that-independent independent filmmakers.
“There’s an argument to be made that a lot of filmmakers at a certain point in their careers are only preaching to the choir”
I suppose you could make that argument, but when it comes to Cronenberg the producer contacted him specifically about making a movie out of a script that Cronenberg initially wrote decades ago. This is less David Cronenberg preaching anything and more him going where the funding is.
Can you blame a Smith-ite for desperately praising middling reviews as “good” after the last few items in his filmography?
Depends; how far back are we going?
Funnily enough Clerks II is considered the last film that was actually good.
Zack & Miri Make a Porno really doesn’t get the love it deserves. (It was released 2 years after Clerks II.) It also works as a proto Clerks III because the movie was heavily inspired by Smith’s experience filming Clerks.However, it’s also responsible for the steep decline in Smith’s movies. Seth Rogan got Smith to habitually smoke weed and his writing has suffered as a result. (Though he’s still a lot of fun to listen to–Smith is a hell of a storyteller, he’s just not that good of a writer anymore.)
69% overall
Nice!
Should we high-five?
In a row?
“This is a rare negative review for the film”
Not according to metacritic, which has Clerks III at 50% positive reviews.
I really liked it, to be honest.For what it’s worth, I didn’t really think it was a clear-cut example of “fridging”. Dawson’s character isn’t killed to give Dante a sense of purpose or drive, it completely breaks him.SPOILERSSPOILERSSPOILERSSPOILERSSPOILERSHe never gets over it. Not even close.
He really had to kill randall’s wife and daughter?? Smith must really hate that character.
why would he kill Rosario Dawson? That’s like shooting you in the foot.
Maybe she pulled a Leonard Nimoy or Harrison Ford and said “Yeah, I’ll do the sequel, but only if you kill my character off.”
Remember, member, r…me…member when.. when Kevin Smith was considered an up-and-coming auteur filmmaker? Aah, and, and then he turned into this passionless, visionless, good idealess movie-adjacent guy is he now?
I wouldn’t say he’s passionless, although his movies are.
…what the hell was this? Did you have an aneurysm?
His act wore thin pretty quick.
Gen X is giving me Boomer vibes, dude. Hope they don’t do a “Reality Bites” sequel set in a nursing home.
With all the smoking they did, one of those characters would probably have had a heart attack or lung cancer by now.
It’s people trying to sell stuff to us GenXers. Don’t worry, we’re still apathetic and haven’t sold out…much.
Are you being sarcastic, man?
I dunno, like, whatever.
“I don’t even know anymore.”
He can’t even tell anymore.
I sold the fuck out. Money money money!!
Record company gonna give you lots of moneyAnd everything’s gonnaBeAlright*horns*
You, sir, are a man of culture.
Wealth and taste, also.Well, ok, one of them anyhow.
Oh God, I just had a full-on nostalgia attack for like ten minutes.
Nice!
To be fair, we have been trying to sell out for years but the damn boomers weren’t offering. Now that they are finally dying, fucking Millennials are popping in like cockroaches to steal all the promotions we apathetically didn’t pursue. 🙂
Yeah nobody wants to hear about all the shit they’re doing ass backwards.
!nataS teews ym ot s’ereh
AND I didn’t save for retirement!
haven’t sold out…muchDid anyone else have the super liberal know-it-all from your freshman dorm who was working in private equity by five year reunion?
https://www.nbc.com/saturday-night-live/video/millennial-millions/3867395
We’re the Meh Generation
Maybe you’re too young to know, but it’s human nature to slide into self-reverential nostalgia as you enter the back stretch of life. Boomers did it, Gen X may be doing it, and in twenty years, you’ll be doing it too.
In 20 years? They’re (we’re, to be clear) already 10 years into it.
Gen X in the house here, can confirm.
There is hope, it can be avoided. It takes work, though.
Oh it’s started. There’s still bits of 1980s nostalgia (that like 1950s nostalgia seems to have taken a life of its own and is popular even among people too young to remember the period), but mainstream nostalgia has moved on to the 1990s and early 2000s, which is strictly aimed at Millennials (the second biggest generation in American history after the Boomers) rather than the rather small GenX cohort.
I am Gen X and I hated Reality Bites and Singles. Yes, there is no point to my statement.
It was itself point enough.
Singles was okay. It was really saved by the soundtrack.Reality Bites bites.
They made Reality Bites 2 it’s called First Reformed.
Reality Bites Harder
Bite Hard With A Dentist
Then Bite Reality with a Vengeance, followed by Real Free or Bite Hard.
as a gen x er, i’m watching us too, its a slow process but yeah, some are turning. Had some classmates start to get really neophobic and its concerning me.
Problem is watching this trailer has the opposite effect on me of seeing Hawke and Delpy or Rocky Balboa age naturally and logically with their characters. This just makes me sad because the whole idea of Clerks seemed to be that yeah they’re fucking around for now but would eventually figure it out.
Dante’s wife and child die? That seems needlessly dark. I’m assuming it’s because Smith didn’t know what to do with them, but damn. There are other ways to handle that. And of all filmmakers, he’s one that should know what fridging is, and why he shouldn’t do it.
Holy shit killing them off like that is such a fucking downer move it completely takes away all interested i had in seeing this.
It’s killing Newt and Bishop all over again.
Wait, Newt DIED? I’ve gotta watch that film again…
Man where were you in 1992
Between Aliens and III, not in Aliens itself.
THANK you, that makes a LOT more sense now. That must be why I have no memory of it even though I’ve seen the second film a zillion times.
Same.
but Dante’s been dealt an unlucky hand, failing to heal his anguish over the sudden, accidental deaths of his wife Becky (Rosario Dawson) and young daughter. WHOAAAA! Well shit, that’s a fucking choice!
Yeah that kinda stopped me in my tracks and I haven’t even seen Clerks II. That’s… a choice you can make.
They fembotted her
Like…she was a huge part of why the sequel worked *at all*. Such a bad choice.
She’s still in this movie, just less. Pretty sure “Rosario Dawson’s day rate & schedule” were a fairly significant factor in this decision.
They are wrong about it being a young daughter. I’m pretty sure she’s still pregnant when she dies.
Then fucking DOUBLE WHOAAAAAA!
You get how that’s worse, right?
Oh, phew
Indeed, the dialogue isn’t definite I don’t think but in the film the date on Becca’s gravestone is 2006, which is the year Clerks II came out. I think she died very quickly after the film finished.
So not okay
Well I was going to see it tomorrow (on my monthly card so it’s not an immediate cash loss) but that’s put me well off.
Has any filmmaker lost touch with what brought them success/notoriety worse than Kevin Smith? He basically flushed a pretty lucrative career down the toilet. It’s been steadily downhill since Dogma and he still keeps rehashing the same tired shit.And how does someone who knows about the history of fridging as well as anyone then fridge his female lead? It’s just baffling.
… maybe she asked him to?
Oh come now
?I mean, it’s a way to not have to be in any more of his films…
Well if that’s what she wanted couldn’t she have just said no to this one
He’s pretty much admitted that he relies on a core group of his fans to eat up the same tired shit and keep giving him money. He doesn’t get any flack for it because he’s a seemingly nice guy who talks about weed and comics with a smile on his face, but he’s basically a grifter at this point in his career.
She was filming Ahsoka and could only be on set for a couple days. If she’d have had a problem with being “fridged” I’m sure she wouldn’t have done the movie.
I just feel sorry for Rosario Dawson and hope she got paid enough.
So she’s dead but still in the cast? Is she a ghost or will there be flashbacks?
Well, Kevin Smith isn’t one to reference Star Wars incessantly, every five seconds, all the fucking time, so there probably won’t be a Rosario Dawson Force Ghost appearance.
i presume so? somebody spoil it for me
SPOILERS etc.She appears to Dante in several visions. She’s long dead before the film starts.
I hope everything she says is “Even if I didn’t look like this, I still could’ve done so much better. Send me back to hell, please!”And then Jason Lee from Dogma shows up to snarkily bring her back downI would watch THAT MOVIE!
As one of the 17 people who liked RED STATE, I can say that “results may vary” when it comes to Kevin Smith films. But I have never cared about the Clerks films, and the second one seemed incredibly desperate and sloppy. Why would I think a third outing would be a good time? And yet Smith strikes me as one of the nicest people making movies, for better or worse.
I still have to track down Red State, but I did not care at all for Zach & Miri. I seem to be a minority on that one.
There’s no way this wasn’t going to be horrible.
Not sure I want to watcha fun comedy about a guy who had a heart attack and also his wife and child died. Seems like a tonal issue to me
As someone who’s ambivalent about Smith (usually like his movies, but don’t actively seek to watch them), and had his wife die suddenly and unexpectedly this year, it’s a hard pass. I can’t imagine a comedy with that as background.
Christ, I’m sorry mate.
Plus he’s not good at making feature length comedies.
I mean, the heart attack as a setup I can get. That’s Kevin mining his own stuff for pathos, and that’s worked out pretty well for him in the past (though usually he’s a little more subtle about it). But the rest might have actually taken me from “I don’t care how terrible it is, I just wanna hang out with these characters for a couple hours” to “maybe I’ll wait until there’s some sort of boxed set of all of the Askewniverse movies on blu-ray (or whatever replaces blu-ray), and watch it then.”
Well, you can’t argue that the dead wife angle didn’t work in Jersey Girl……..
No, no… Randal has a heart attack. Dante’s wife and daughter died.So you’re good.
You know I knew that but I blocked it out for some reason. I think its because I always felt Dante was Smith’s insert character. Still sucks that instead of figuring out way to make Dante’s happy ending from Clerks II still stick and make this movie he just killed them off.
Randal was actually Smith’s insert character (though not based on himself) which is why he has all the funny lines.
My opinion is Dante was who Smith really was, the neurotic nerd. Randall, the care free guy with the funny lines, is who he wished to be.
You’re probably right, I know Smith has said he’s Randal but that’s probably because he could spend ages thinking up funny lines to give him, while really he is (or was) and easily stressed nerd like Dante.He’s not like either of them now though, more power to him.
….yeah, I’m from NJ (with a couple distant connections to Smith) and loved Dogma and everything, but they lost me completely at killing off Rosario Dawson. I went from having a reasonable amount of nostalgic interest in seeing this to actively wanting to pass. Only reason I might check it out now is if enough time passes that I forget and catch it on TV or something.
It’s weird because she’s featured so heavily in all the promo? What does she do, show up just to die?
That’s my guess. Struck me as weird too.
She’s a ghost to help Dante grieve. The only reason I can think they did that is they couldn’t afford Dawson for more than a few days and even then, it doesn’t make sense.
She’s seemed weirdly enthusiastic about the whole thing. I actually feel like she genuinely likes Smith and enjoys being part of his work, inexplicable as that may be.
It doesn’t seem inexplicable to me. Guy occasionally says some cringey shit but other than that he seems like a perfectly nice and affable person who more than likely runs an extremely relaxed set. Given the alternatives in Hollywood that seems like the best scenario possible for an enjoyable work experience, and while Kevin Smith doesn’t seem to boost anyone’s careers, he doesn’t seem to hurt them either.Working for a nice dude in a relaxed environment for decent pay and no damage to future prospects? The movies might suck but it’s not hard to imagine why actors are drawn to him anyway.
Using her star power to sell more tickets.
You’d think maybe they could use some of that star power by having her, oh I don’t know, in the movie more.
Apparently she shows up as a ghost at various times, including when she tells Dante she’s been hooking up with Frederick Douglass and letting him go ass-to-mouth.
The sad thing is I honestly can’t tell if this is real or not
At least in the movie with Post Malone in the trailer they let everyone know he dies in the first reel so you didn’t show up just to see him.
This conclusion spawns from an inherently flawed premise. They would have done better to advertise that Post Malone was not in the movie.
If you had Rosario Dawson in your movie, wouldn’t you feature her in the promo….?
If I had Rosario Dawson in my movie I would simply not pair her with a guy who looks like Brian O’Halloran
She’s a “horny ghost”.https://movieweb.com/rosario-dawson-clerks-interview/
I know you can’t compare both, but didn’t K. Smith kill off J.Lo in that one movie with Ben Affleck and Liv Tyler, shit I forgot the name of that movie, I remember enjoying it ( when it came out I was still a Kevin Smith fanboy) and it also had George Carlin…Jersey Girl…that was the last Smith movie I saw in a theater and enjoyed.
She was cut from the movie because the whole Ben-J Lo relationship died and Gigli had come out previously bombing spectacularly. And as a capitalist he is like nope less of them together better for the movie.
Yes, J-Lo was indeed the asteroid in Armageddon.
Only you. You were the one who enjoyed it.
I refuse to read your review. Everywhere else I am hearing that this is Kevin’s best film in over a decade. Praise is being given to the two main starts for an outstanding performance. I have zero doubt this is going to be a masterpiece. I keep seeing high scores across the board. A-, 9/10. And here you are reviewing a film you are already biased against from the start. No thanks. This movie is going to be amazing.
Hey Butterfly – Sorry to burst your bubble, but all reviews are biased.
Everything’s gonna be alright.
** pats ButterfulTsunami on the head **
I keep seeing high scores across the board. A-, 9/10.
It’s got a Rotten Tomatoes score of 67% and a Metacritic score of 47. This is hardly the only dissenting voice amidst a chorus of rapturous adulation.
I am hearing that this is Kevin’s best film in over a decade.“Damning with faint praise” was invented to describe this exact sentence. It’s basically just saying “this is better than Tusk.”
Wait, you mean to tell me that this movie soars to even greater heights than Hollyweed? Even with what may have been Adam Brody’s finest performance of his whole career?
Brilliant post if it’s sarcasm.
Dante’s been dealt an unlucky hand, failing to heal his anguish over the
sudden, accidental deaths of his wife Becky (Rosario Dawson) and young
daughter
hahahaha what hahahahaha fuck this movie
Jesus Christ this sounds like a mess. At this point Kevin Smith should probably just retire from filmmaking, I’m struggling to remember the last thing he did that was even slightly worthwhile. Maybe Clerks 2? God this feels like a lazy grab bag of real life experiences (especially the heart attack) and nostalgia pandering of the worst kind.
I feel like parts of this movie’s premise were already tackled in Jay and Silent Bob Reboot and Zack and Miri.
I dunno why they need to keep revisiting the View Askewniverse , that well has run dry…HOWEVER if they bring back the Clerks Cartoon, I am all in, shit even a live action clerks cartoon then (with CGI and all, maybe it can fly) seeing Bear driving in real life would be awesome. and who can they cast as Leonardo Leonardo?? Robert Patinson? ? ….(shit I forgot Alec Baldwin voiced him).
While rewatching the first movie recently, it hit me that Randall is absolutely the kind of guy who’d say racist stuff about the new Little Mermaid. More to piss people off than because he actually believed it, but it still kind of wrecked the whole movie for me.
“You know how much the average jizz mopper makes?”
Oh yeah, we just have to find something to ruin old movies over right?
I forget what Miramax movie i rented that showed the Clerks trailer way back when… but it was the next movie that was rented the following weekend. While i did enjoy CII, i’m not sure it was a story that needed to be told. Are the clerks sequels a less main stream more nerdy version of Adam Sandler’s Grown ups*? *did not like grown ups, pls don’t interpret this as a positive.
“Dante’s been dealt an unlucky hand, failing to heal his anguish over the sudden, accidental deaths of his wife Becky (Rosario Dawson) and young daughter.”Yikes.“Hijinks and some hilarity ensue as he writes, casts and films what becomes the movie we know as Clerks.”YIKES!Maybe they should’ve kept the original ending and just killed Dante at the end of Clerks.
Funny you should say that…..
Sadly, Kevin Smith has become an argument against smoking pot.
He’s also an argument against the fact that weed isn’t addictive. Holy shit, he can’t live without it during anything! He promotes one of his podcasts as “wake and bake — get high with Kev”, but he’s high during ALL his various podcasts.
Kevin Smith? Clerks was a happy accident. Pretty much all the rest? Just an accident.
There’s a couple of missed plot pointe in this review that seem to indicate to me that reviewer wasn’t playing all that close attention when they saw the film. Not the biggest deals in the world, but not small throwaway things either. In any case, I actually mostly agree with their overall take on the film (though spoiler-free, I did think it’s climax was much more effective at dealing with grief than it’s being given credit for here).
Its starting to look more and more like Kevin Smith should have stuck with his original ending to Clerks.
really- spoil a significant plot point in the 2nd paragraph of the “review” without warning.. UGH!
Courtney may have been on her phone during this screening.
Wait Rosario Dawsons character died? Fuck that Im not even seeing this then.
I quite liked it, but holy shit it gets dark.I honestly didn’t think he had it in him.
Clerks II was 2006? Feels like that was five years ago.
This review is awful.
“It’s too bad writer-director Kevin Smith doesn’t possess the clarity of vision he once had to refine ideas well enough to let his narrative do the talking.” hmmm…..
Honestly, having seen this movie now on my own, I’m pretty sure we either a) didn’t see the same movie, or b) you literally went out of your way to miss all of the points. This review seems to pretend the movie both didn’t have any message, and then accuse it of having a poor message.
This is probably one of Smith’s best works, but then again, I actually let emotions in from time to time.
I wanted to love this movie, but wound up hating it so much it’s causing me to retroactively hate all his previous movies.