Fellman's Movie Reviews

Red = Spoilers 

Clerks is Kevin Smith’s debut film, shot in black and white, and financed entirely by himself. He maxed out four separate credit cards on the hopes that it would be successful. Thankfully, it was, and we now have what is colloquially known as the “View-Askewnaverse”.  

What’s it about? Clerks is about a day in the life of two employees of the Quick Stop and RST Video store, Dante Hicks and Randal Graves. Two less than competent employees who perform their jobs well enough not to get fired. We start with Dante sleeping in his closet for some reason, and tumbling out of it, when his phone rings, and his boss wants him to come in to work on his day off. Dante, obviously doesn’t want to, but agrees to on the condition that his boss comes in by noon. He gets in to work to find that somebody has jammed gum in the steel shutters and has to make a giant sign with shoe polish to hang outside to assure people that the store is open. Soon after, customers start arriving and buying cigarettes, and a man whips a crowd into a frenzy of anti-smoking sentiment until Dante’s girlfriend shows up to calm everyone down. It turns out the man is a representative of Chewlie’s gum and is trying to drum up more gum sales by whipping people into an anti-smoking frenzy. Soon after, Randal shows up for work. More than a half hour late, let it still be noted. Even though he spends most of his time over at the Quick Stop, talking to Dante. Later, Dante finds out that their boss has left to go to Vermont and is not coming in at noon like he said he was. Angry about being lied to, Dante decides to close the store to play hockey on the roof. An angry customer joins their game early in the first quarter and shoots their only ball off the roof and down into the sewer, ending the game. Dante and Randal go back into the store where they find out that an ex-girlfriend of Dante’s, Julie Dwyer has died. They decide to close the store again so they can go to her funeral. They’re then seen running out of her funeral because Randal knocked her casket over. Soon after, Dante’s ex, Caitlin, shows up and they prepare to go on a date. After Caitlin has sex with a dead guy in the bathroom, Randal tells Veronica about Dante not being able to affect change in his life thinking that he’s helping him. Randal and Dante then fight in the Quick Stop and eventually make up. Silent Bob gives one of his rare speeches near the end too.  

What’s good? The philosophical banter throughout the movie is probably what makes it so watchable. I think that’s what makes Kevin Smith movies so entertaining in general. He just writes very relatable dialogue. And I think for an independent film, it’s a much more engrossing movie than people give it credit for.  

What’s bad? They’re not the best actors. You can tell they use a couple of people for 4, 5, 6 different roles. Walt Flanagan had to play at least six different people in that movie. And not all of them had lines. Half of them were just walking through the screen, filling space. Mosier was at least four different people in that movie.  

The acting? It’s an independent film. What are you going to do? You’re not getting A list actors. You’re getting the people who want to be actors but haven’t become actors yet. Those are the people who are in independent films. And look, some of them made it. Some of them didn’t, sure. But that’s Hollywood… 

The effects? The most effects there are in the movie are just editing tricks and camera work. There’s no effects to speak of.  

Anti-cigarette flash mob. How do you get a whole bunch of people that worked up about smoking, that early in the morning? You couldn’t get smokers that pissed off about smoking that early in the morning like that. They’d be too tired and they’d want to go out and have a cigarette. They wouldn’t want to stand in there and listen to it. 

Everybody just says “pack of cigarettes”. Smokers have brands. They have preferences. They have flavors. They have specific things they get. Nobody says “pack of cigarettes”.  

Gum in the locks. That’s just a real dick move. For no reason to jam gum in the locks of some random business. Like he says: Bunch of savages in this town… 

I’m 37. I don’t know, to find out your girlfriend went down on 37 guys? That seems like kind of a lot. I mean, I know everybody is entitled to their own choices and whatever, and I’m not telling other people what to do, I’m just saying, that seems like a lot… 

Happy Scrappy Hero Pup. Happy Scrappy Hero Pup seemed a little out of place in that long list of videos that Randal was ordering. But, I guess that was kind of the point, wasn’t it? 

Empire is the much better sequel. Randal and Dante are talking about which is the better sequel, Empire or Jedi, when it is well known that Empire is possibly the best sequel ever made. As a video expert, Randal should’ve already known this.  

Selling cigarettes to children. Back in the day, parents would send their kids to the corner store with a note to buy cigarettes for their parents all the time. I don’t know how long ago that stopped happening, it’s probably been a while.  

Dante hands Randall his jacket. When Dante gets back to the store from changing, he hands Randal his coat to, what I can only assume, hang up, and Randal just tosses it on the floor next to him. It was kind of pointless to even hand it to Randal in the first place if he was just going to throw it on the floor anyway. 

The detective is speed writing. When the detective is taking the dead guy away, she’s writing, or pretending to be writing, on the clipboard. But she’s obviously writing so fast that if she actually were writing anything, it wouldn’t even be making contact with the paper. Her hand is just moving from side to side at lightning speed. 

Why would you hit somebody with a loaf of bread? When Dante and Randal are fighting, one of them grabs a loaf of bread and hits the other with it. What is the point of that? What is hitting somebody with a loaf of bread going to do? If there has ever been a useless weapon in the history of ever, it is a loaf of bread… 

So, yeah. You should obviously see Clerks. Not only is it Kevin Smith’s first movie, but it’s worth watching and it has a lot of quotable lines that you’ll remember forever. Like Silent Bob’s advice at the end. And as always, keep on watching, with a smile on your face…