03/05/10 - Clerks.

Clerks. (1994, 92 min)
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0109445/

I've been wanting to see Clerks. for some time now. And really the only reason for that is to say "I've seen Clerks." I'd seen some other Kevin Smith stuff and not really liked any of it, but I was going in to Clerks. hoping it'd be different.

The film mainly stars the duo of Dante (Brian O'Halloran) and Randal (Jeff Anderson). Dante works at a convenience store while Randal works next door at a movie rental shop. But really they just hang out all day and the film shows as they deal with the customers and their life. Secondary roles are: Veronica (Marilyn Ghigliotti), Dante's girlfriend; Caitlin (Lisa Spoonhauer), Dante's ex-girlfriend; and Jay (Jason Mewes) and Silent Bob (Kevin Smith).

The film is shot in black and white for budget reasons and this proved to not even be a problem at all. I was fine with it. The problem instead stemmed from atrocious acting and horrible dialogue. I'm not really a fan of vulgar jokes to begin with unless they are done well. If they are vulgar just to be vulgar then they usually turn out really bad. That's exactly what happens in Clerks. and most of the dialogue just comes off as a way to say as much vulgar stuff as possible. It gets annoying quickly and even just 92 minutes of it is too much. It's not that I'm offended by this in the slightest - it's that it's just not funny. On the acting front, there's similar problems. When either Dante or Randal get upset they raise their voice in such a way that gives no believable sense of anger. The way they deliver meaningful lines is pathetic. The overall lack of emotion from any character at all is downright boring. I could go on and on for a long time. I'll simply say: Clerks. has pathetic acting.

One thing that I did like about Clerks. is how well budget problems are handled. I give Smith credit for coming up with some creative ways to work around having no money such as having reasons for having the convenience store be always dark or using one person for multiple roles. For the camerawork, there seemed to be two distinct choices. The first was just completely stationary, doing a really long take of some dialogue heavy scene. While most of the time I didn't even remotely like the dialogue, I thought these long takes were pretty impressive. The second choice of camerawork was a herky-jerky back and forth way of shooting when two people were talking to each other. This was most noticeable in the car ride of Dante and Randal. This style I didn't like as it came off stupid and almost like it wanted to be funny.

Overall, I gave this film a 2/10. I hated so many aspects of it. I respected some of the things Smith did with it, but there was just way, way, way too much bad to outweigh these few positives. I can easily say that it is one of the most overrated movies to come out in the past 20 years.