I've been a Kevin Smith fan since my teens, and it pains me to say that Clerks 3 is a misfire on practically every front. From the intrusive music running under every scene, to the bloated and mostly useless cast, this film is a mess to watch play out.
When we last left our intrepid heroes at the end of Clerks 2, Dante (Brian O'Halloran), finally learned that he should "shit or get off the pot" and take control of his horrible lot in life. And he did, marrying Becky (Rosario Dawson) and partnering up with his best friend Randal (Jeff Anderson) to buy the Quick Stop. He had finally turned his life around, becoming his own boss, finding a partner who respected and understood him, and growing his relationship with his best friend to a healthier, more mature place.
As Clerks 3 opens, it's revealed that Becky died in a car accident that also took the life of her and Dante's child. This could have been for budgetary reasons (Dawson is far and away the most high-profile actor in the film, outside of cameos), but in a movie full of characters with nothing to do, her omission felt more like a fridging than anything else. This regresses Dante past Clerks 2, and even before his "I'm not even supposed to be here" stuck-in-a-rut days of the first movie. Dante is now in a full-blown depression, and while O'Halloran does an admirable job acting his ass off, this decision feels so bizarre and mean-spirited to a character we've rooted for for 30 years that it's almost laughable.
Smith's other alter ego, Randal Graves, is about the same as we left him, misanthropic and proud of it. But when he suffers a massive heart attack, he decides to do something with his life and make a movie about his experiences.
One of the big reasons Clerks worked so well was because Dante, the sad sack everyman who was desperate to fit in with society and get his due, and Randal, the outspoken destroyer of unspoken societal rules, worked so well together. They were two halves of the same whole. The character that society shat on, and the one who shat back. And I’d argue that for the young, unknown aspiring filmmaker Kevin Smith, they were two halves of him, too.
Clerks 3 sees them in what amounts to two different movies. Dante is dealing with the literal ghosts of his past while Randal runs around with Elias (Trevor Fehrman), Jay (Jason Mewes), and Silent Bob (Smith) as he tries to make a movie that is mostly cobbled together elements from Clerks 1 with a few from Clerks 2. And I’m not sure if that’s supposed to be a meta-commentary, but nearly every joke is also repeated from those movies. There is no new material in this film, and while Smith’s movies have always been an intertextual experience, each one stood on its own as a coherent story. Clerks 3 does not. If you aren’t familiar with every film, interview, and podcast featuring Kevin Smith, Clerks 3 is nearly unapproachable. Anything that is new is an NFT joke that immediately dates the movie and shows how out of touch Smith has become.
The movie’s ending sees Dante suffer a heart attack that ultimately kills him. But before he dies, Randal rushes to finish the final cut of his movie (which is, of course, the original Clerks), featuring Dante as the protagonist, to show Dante what an inspiration he’s been. But it all feels so hollow. While Randal ran around making his movie, Dante was ignored by him, fighting his own demons alone. The movie attempts to rectify this, but the ending is rushed, and the emotion doesn’t land. What should have been a cap for the 30-year friendship between these two guys feels like a footnote.
This film is mostly autobiographical. Smith suffered a heart attack and nearly died. His survival and the new joy he's found in filmmaking are great. I wish the man nothing but the best, as even when he makes bad films, he’s still a good guy making sure his friends have steady work. His fanbase is loyal to him, and he is to them. That’s who his films are for, and most of those people were always going to love this movie because of that. And that’s fantastic.
But between this movie and Jay and Silent Bob Reboot, it feels like he’s an artist who has run out of things to say.
Smith said in interviews for Clerks 3 that at one point he saw himself as Dante, but after his career took off, that was no longer true. So in a way, this movie feels like Smith killing the everyman part of himself that spawned Clerks and his career in the first place. It feels out of touch, with no real emotion and a handful of jokes from old movies to keep the engine chugging. And as Smith speaks over the end credits (which is also baffling—didn’t he write and direct and perform I the film? And he STILL couldn’t get his story across without doing a voiceover?), he tells us how Randal lived into his 90s and looks back on his days of menial, underappreciated labor in the Quick Stop fondly, leaving me to wonder how he has so completely misunderstood his own work.
And that’s when I understood. Dante, the put-upon everyman is dead. Randal, the filmmaker with nothing to say lives on.
