Monday, November 3, 2008

The Clerks 2 by Kevin Smith


A Lacksidasical recommendation:


The Clerks 2 by Kevin Smith

Scorsese uses pure class, Tarantino uses violence,Tim Burton uses haunting imagery and dark overtones,Kubric used pure genius;but Kevin Smith when and if he ever reaches the level of these greats, will be know for the use of the explicitly disgusting.

As is often the case for me before Mondays, insomnia kicked in. After trying a selection of unmentionable measures, I gave up.

I decided instead decided to use the time to go through various movie blogs. 2008 has been a very intriguing year for film industries throughout the world. But here in America its been a particularly weird year.Strikes,financial troubles, good actors quitting or in some case just dying(but not before this).

So I decided to look back a few years, more specifically to 2006. A good year for hollywood, and came across this brilliantly simple movie. Directed by the mundane and explicitly talented Kevin James, The Clerks 2 is everything that makes you love America and its unabashed celebration of individualism.

On first look, The Clerks 2, a sequel to very impressive The Clerks, is another New Jersey stoner story of rags to riches.And the funny thing is thats exactly what it is. But the beauty of cinema is that there are so many aspects to it that even the most cliched of storylines can be made into a work of genius.

Minimum wage,the rat race of job life,religion,Peter Jackson vs George Lucas,friendship,inter species erotica..you name it has everything in it. And the funny thing is that the pure disgust that you might feel at seeing certain parts of the film just evaporates when you realize the underlying themes of the movie.This is typical of Kevin James, a man who recently tried to get a R certificate(it was originally NC-17) for his recently released, queerily titled film.

Above all the movie is intelligent and the pure subtelty of some of the humor really complements the explicit stuff(watch out for the donkey scene, classic Kevin James).

At times it is very cliched and some of the dialogues in the end makes you wonder if a pre-school toddler wrote the ending. But you are still left feeling happy and full of new perceptions about life in general in the end.

Its crass, immature, vulgar, cliched..but subtely illuminating.

The Clerks 2 by Kevin Smith.Watch it if you cannot sleep and need a reason to think.

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