Post by Dracula on Feb 19, 2023 14:23:32 GMT -5
Clerks III(1/1/2023)
To date my favorite Kevin Smith films, by far, are Clerks and Clerks 2 and I may actually like the sequel better. So I mostly greeted the idea of a Clerks 3 made in 2022 with dread because Kevin Smith is not half the director he used to be and this had all the makings of just tarnishing the franchises legacy. I’ll give the movie this: it more than likely is the best thing that Kevin Smith has made in over a decade. Granted I never actually saw a lot what he’s watched in the last ten years so that’s probably an uninformed opinion but he does at least seem to be trying to take his work seriously here rather than making some self-indulgent stoner movie like he’s been making lately. He has seemed to put at least some thought into where these characters would be at this stage in their lives and shows some reflection about the legacy of those earlier films and has incorporated, albeit awkwardly, some of his own thoughts of mortality in the wake of the director’s real life heart attack. However I would say that this is kind of making an ending for this franchise that I just didn’t really want. Clerks II already basically gave us a happy ending of sorts that this movie needed to undo at the beginning in ways that annoyed me and it really wasn’t in service of a movie that was good enough to be worth doing that. It’s plotline, about Randall making a low budget movie about working at the Quick Stop (essentially the first movie), does not make a lick of sense given that these characters are basically making a young man’s movie in their 50s. But the bigger problem with the movie is just that it isn’t very funny, or at least not as funny as I was hoping for. There are a couple of decent scenes sprinkled through the movie here and there and I want to give Smith some credit for trying but the movie ultimately just doesn’t justify itself.
**1/2 out of Five
To date my favorite Kevin Smith films, by far, are Clerks and Clerks 2 and I may actually like the sequel better. So I mostly greeted the idea of a Clerks 3 made in 2022 with dread because Kevin Smith is not half the director he used to be and this had all the makings of just tarnishing the franchises legacy. I’ll give the movie this: it more than likely is the best thing that Kevin Smith has made in over a decade. Granted I never actually saw a lot what he’s watched in the last ten years so that’s probably an uninformed opinion but he does at least seem to be trying to take his work seriously here rather than making some self-indulgent stoner movie like he’s been making lately. He has seemed to put at least some thought into where these characters would be at this stage in their lives and shows some reflection about the legacy of those earlier films and has incorporated, albeit awkwardly, some of his own thoughts of mortality in the wake of the director’s real life heart attack. However I would say that this is kind of making an ending for this franchise that I just didn’t really want. Clerks II already basically gave us a happy ending of sorts that this movie needed to undo at the beginning in ways that annoyed me and it really wasn’t in service of a movie that was good enough to be worth doing that. It’s plotline, about Randall making a low budget movie about working at the Quick Stop (essentially the first movie), does not make a lick of sense given that these characters are basically making a young man’s movie in their 50s. But the bigger problem with the movie is just that it isn’t very funny, or at least not as funny as I was hoping for. There are a couple of decent scenes sprinkled through the movie here and there and I want to give Smith some credit for trying but the movie ultimately just doesn’t justify itself.
**1/2 out of Five
