Kevin Smith’s gift is for talk that makes ordinary frustration funny. Clerks earns our affection that way, though his patience with a conversation can outlast its jokes.
Fi1m perspective
The clerks in Clerks (1994) give their pop-culture arguments more attention than their customers. Smith understands how a dull shift can make a small question seem urgent, and takes the talk seriously without asking us to agree with it. We laughed at the seriousness of those arguments, with paying customers treated as an inconvenience. Brian O’Halloran and Jeff Anderson make these clerks worth spending time with, even when the writing wanders.
David Klein’s cinematography keeps the shop uninviting and the performances easy to follow, but the images have little to add once we know the place. Smith and fellow editor Scott Mosier let the exchanges develop at the pace of a shift with time to spare. That patience helps the actors, though it also leaves some sketches continuing after their joke has finished. Occasionally, an indecent subject seems to be enough to satisfy Smith, when it needed a better joke. The film needs a firmer edit in those passages, rather than more elaborate pictures.
A run of connected comedies followed, including the more emotionally complicated romantic story of Chasing Amy (1997) and the religious satire of Dogma (1999). As Silent Bob, Smith appears alongside Jason Mewes’s Jay across several of these films. By Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back (2001), that shared world and his own persona had become subjects for a road-trip comedy. The later turn towards horror included the body-horror experiment Tusk (2014).
The risk becomes clearer in Jay and Silent Bob Reboot (2019), with its reliance on in-jokes for an audience already acquainted with these characters. Clerks asks for no such preparation: a shop, some boredom and a paying customer are enough to explain the irritation. Start there; the rest of the series can wait.
Biography
Kevin Patrick Smith is an American filmmaker, actor, writer and podcaster. Born on 2 August 1970 in Red Bank, New Jersey, he rose to prominence with the low-budget independent comedy Clerks (1994), which he wrote, directed, co-produced, co-edited and in which he appeared as Silent Bob.
The film launched the recurring characters Jay and Silent Bob and the shared fictional universe known as the View Askewniverse, which includes later entries such as Mallrats (1995), Chasing Amy (1997), Dogma (1999), Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back (2001), Clerks II (2006) and Clerks III (2022). Smith has also directed films outside the series, including Zack and Miri Make a Porno (2008), Cop Out (2010) and Tusk (2014), and episodes of television series such as The Flash and Supergirl.
