Mark Reviews Movies: CLERKS III

Clerks III, Lionsgate

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Review by Mark Dujsik | September 13, 2022

Almost everything about Clerks III points backwards. The movie, which returns to catch up on the lives of the eccentric characters established in writer/director Kevin Smith's previous two films in this series, begins with a pretty hard reset.

Some of that, of course, was established with the ending of the second film, in which Dante (Brian O'Halloran) and Randal (Jeff Anderson), after a stint at a fast food restaurant, bought and re-opened the convenience store where they spent so many years of dead-end living at a dead-end job. It was a bittersweet finale, to be sure. Smith's newest entry, arriving 16 years after that first sequel, quickly removes most of the sweetness that might have been remaining in that equation. It feels like a cynical way to get these characters back to square one.

That's where we first find the duo, though. They're still working at the shop. They're still closing the store to play hockey on the roof, as a line of irritated customers forms down below. They're still arguing about items of pop culture. Yes, Dante and Randal basically are still the same two guys they were back when Clerks was released in 1994, and to be sure, the opening scenes here are fairly pleasant. We've watched these two characters age without ever really growing up for almost three decades now, and there is some comfort in seeing that routine continue.

Smith, though, ends up becoming far too comfortable with the pleasant feelings of the past. His screenplay gives Dante and Randal a couple of life-changing complications, but both of them serve as a way to get them back to where they began. For the former character, it's the revelation that Becky (Rosario Dawson), the boss/friend/one-night-stand who became his fiancée by the end of the second film, died in a car accident shortly after the events of the previous entry. In the intervening years, he has more or less given up on doing much of anything with his life. Hence, here he remains, still miserable and standing behind the counter at this convenience store in a small town in New Jersey.

The decision leaves a bad taste, especially considering that Dawson does appear in this entry, either as a dream or a ghost—perhaps as both, depending on the context of the scene. Imagine, instead, if it wasn't sudden death but the mundane routine of life that kept Dante, as well as his wife and their kid (who was never born in Smith's version of events), in this situation. Isn't that what the previous two films were about on a foundational level? None of these characters wanted to be where they were in life, but they were there anyway, doing what they could to pass the time and have at least some kind of fun. For Dante, fun is now a thing of the past, and his story and character in this installment possess a fatalistic air that Smith makes tangible by the end.

As for Randal, he has a nearly fatal heart attack in the first act, resulting in the movie's gimmicky, self-referential plot. After almost dying, he decides that it's time to stop watching movies, as he has his entire life, and to actually make one. It'll be about all of the day-to-day oddities and strange exploits experienced over the decades by him and Dante—as well as Elias (Trevor Ferhman), the fundamentalist Christian who becomes a Satanist when his prayers aren't immediately answered, and the stoner pair Jay (Jason Mewes) and Silent Bob (Smith), who now have a legal marijuana dispensary next door but, amusingly, still make sales outside, as has been their custom.

One can probably sense where this is going. Sure enough, Randal, Dante, and his makeshift cast and crew of friends and locals make a movie that is essentially the same one Smith made almost 30 years ago (A somewhat clever running joke is that a lot of people assume the team is making a porno, but Smith, obviously, already made a movie about that idea).

The director (Smith, not Randal) calls in some favors from famous friends—most of whom show up in a montage of cameos during an audition scene—and others who appeared in his 1994 debut feature (small speaking roles and extras, as well as Marilyn Ghigliotti returning as Dante's former flame Veronica). Smith even lets his Silent Bob, recruited to be the cinematographer on the project, talk about the pragmatic and creative decision to shoot in black-and-white. As the shoot goes on, there's some other behind-the-scenes trivia for those who weren't aware why the shutters were closed in the first film or fans who might have forgotten certain details, such as the exact amount of the original film's budget, over the passing decades.

It's an in-joke that becomes the entire reason for this sequel's existence. Clerks III doesn't just embrace nostalgia. The movie reverts to and lives within it, and if there's a sense that Smith has run out of ideas for these characters, his ending at least assures us that he knows that's the case.

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