Clerks III and The End of Kevin Smith

longtime viewers of this channel might remember an old video of mine called Kevin Smith Revisited where I looked back at the Cinematic hero of my teen years to see if his films still held up and I found that they mostly did not all of them of course and perhaps I wasn't quite as enamored with Jay and Silent Bob's Antics as I was at 14 but Smith's best movies still made me laugh a whole lot certain films had even improved with age or more accurately being older allowed me to get more from them I've always liked clerks but the comedy at Ms from the misery which comes with working a menial minimum wage job hit a lot harder once I had actually you know done that the overall experience of making that video was very cathartic a means to acknowledge how important Smith's movies were to me and appreciate them at their best while also saying goodbye because I fully expected that to be the end of the road for me and Kevin Smith I'd probably rewatch his old movies from time to time and might even passively catch up with new ones if they cross my path via streaming or television but my time seeking out Smith's movies was over part of that was of course that Smith's output in the 2010s looked increasingly awful and I really had no interest in subjecting myself to movies like Tusk or yoga hosers n n n n n but there was something more fundamental than Smith just making movies that looked bad I remember listening to one of his podcasts back in 2013 no I can't remember which one he's made about a billion and sorting through them a decade later is an exercise in futility and discussions shifted to before midnight set to release in theaters that summer before midnight was hotly anticipated the third film in Richard link ladders before Trilogy exploring the romance between Jesse and Seline and how romantic love transforms with age Smith confessed however that despite the hype despite the film's positive early buzz and despite link ladder inspiring the young Smith to pursue filmm in the first place he wasn't really interested in seeing before midnight in theaters for Smith the movie theater best served high-budget spectacle like Avengers or Man of Steel a movie about two characters talking did not seem worthy of the big screen this was a a Moment of clarity for me I was and remain a firm believer that the theater is the best way to see any movie the large screen dark room and sense of occasion and having to physically go to a theater creates a level of immersion that simply can't be duplicated at home that experience does serve spectacle well but it also serves smaller stories which are more fully absorbing in a theater resulting in a greater intimacy between film and viewer and and a greater sense of a film's richness for Smith himself a filmmaker to disregard that richness in favor of pure franchise worship was eye openening it was in that moment that I fully realized Kevin Smith wasn't for me anymore while I was developing an interest in a larger world of Cinema Smith was fully embracing the bounds and limitations of geek culture and that's fine he's allowed to like what he wants and doesn't owe me anything I wasn't angry I didn't feel betrayed but I did feel an awareness that Smith and I were moving in different directions a feeling reaffirmed by my decreasing interest in his own cinematic output I'd just make my little video to look back on the old movies I liked when I was a teenager and that'll be that but then Smith made Jay and Silent Bob reboot in Clerk's 3 much as I may have outgrown Smith I won't pretend like a return to the VIIs Universe didn't intrigue me at least a little bit more significantly though it was clear from the outset that both films were extremely personal for their writer director one of the conclusions I came to in my old video was that Smith's best movies came from his own anxieties and as he became more comfortable in life he had fewer personal experiences to fuel his art but these new films completely refuted that take Jay and Silent Bob reboot offered an examp examination of what it means to be a good parent with Jay discovering his a stranged child played by Smith's real daughter Harley Quinn Smith Clerk's 3 is even more direct in mirroring Smith's personal life Randall suffers the same heart attack Smith did in 2018 and fearing he's wasted his life decides to make a movie a movie that is a scene for scene Recreation of Kevin Smith's clerks here were two films that not only returned Smith to the world where I first fell in love with him but directly challenge the arguments I had made about the man as an artist I think that's OD a response but I can't just talk about Jan Silent Bob reboot and Clerk's 3 my last Smith video was about the films that mattered to me as a teenager which meant I focused exclusively on the films from the VIIs universe but if I'm going to put his return to that Universe in its proper context I have to talk about Smith's efforts outside of it I have to talk about Kevin Smith's other movies Smith's other movies can be split into two unofficial trilogies a comedy Trilogy and a horror Trilogy each embodies Smith's efforts to Define himself as a filmmaker Outside The Familiar world and characters with which he first established himself the comedies came first and that makes sense given it's the genre he'd worked exclusively in for the first decade of his career it's also a genre Smith had shown a a degree of range in much as the viest universe movies are all connected they're connected pretty Loosely watch marats and Chasing Amy back to back and you'll see two very different movies both are comedies with a lot of sex talk and cursing but moats is a low stakes hangout movie full of goofy Antics Chasing Amy is structured closer to a romantic comedy and reaches for heartfelt drama as much as it does for Laughs if it weren't for some throwaway referen and Jay and Silent Bob's Cameo you'd never suspect these movies are part of the same world Smith had already proven he could make different kinds of comedies it's not unreasonable to think he could make comedies that didn't rely on his familiar characters and so Smith did with 2004's Jersey girl where Chasing Amy had broached a sweeter more romantic tone Jersey girl goes all in on sentimentality the film is a romantic comedy about a city slicker media public IST who learns to be a better father Embrace his humble roots in New Jersey overcome grief and maybe even find new love along the way there are hints of Smith's vulgarity but it's dramatically toned down for a PG-13 characters might talk about how frequently they masturbate but no one's comparing sex wounds or chastising their partner for their [ __ ] record what remains is a film with a little bit of a dirty mind but a bigger heart a film with some runchy jokes but more concerned with uplift and catharsis if Smith's prior films were akin to [ __ ] talking with your mates Jersey girl was more of a warm hug this was the film that would show Smith's gentler side show that he had more to offer than dick and fart jokes but that's not the narrative that would emerge the story of Jersey girl is one of failure a film that was marred by bad tabloid press surrounding the real life romance between Stars Ben fle and Jennifer Lopez and open to low box office and bad reviews Smith took that failure pretty hard Jersey girl wasn't just an attempt to soften His Image it was a personal movie Smith's owed to the joys and responsibilities of being a dad to a little girl after he had become one himself and a tribute to his own father who had recently passed away Smith took a chance on a movie that wouldn't appeal to The Teenagers Who Loved Jan Silent Bob and lay as hard on his sleeve only to be bashed and his film labeled a flop that clearly hurt Smith would quickly Retreat to his safety net with Clerks 2 and in the years to follow would take a dismissive self-depreciating attitude towards Jersey Girl essentially admitting its failure when I was doing Jersey girl I cut J out a half the movie I like I wanted to cut him out entirely but then that just would have left that little kid you know I didn't see Jersey girl really did you do that with other actors you asked Ben Affleck to do one of the stupid movies he's done and I said well Jersey girl and he's like get I don't no jokes Kevin it is I was in Jersey girl okay destroyed my career yep you know what I'm saying like my mother she don't like any of my movies except Jersey girl so that tells the story right there I only caught up with Jersey Girl many years after my Kevin Smith phase even after my 2018 video essay and mosy went into it out of a mix of completionism and curiosity what did this hated movie that Smith himself occasionally took shots at actually look like and to my shock I liked it I laughed a lot and I also got pretty swept up in the character drama even being touched in the end the film is certainly ripe with cliches including a climax where a parent races against the clock to catch his kids performance and this was a large point of contention with critics and that's a fair thing to criticize but something about Jersey Girls cliches feel Earnest to me they aren't employed as a cynical Ploy for Mass Appeal or out of a lack of creativity but an honest expression of fatherhood as Smith has experienced it there's an interview Smith did with film critic David ansen who did not like the film and when they discuss Affleck racing across town to get to his daughter's recital Smith confesses that the shot of Affleck running up the hill is his favorite in the film The image that most encapsulates what it's like to be a father I'm also inclined to let the cliches and more contrived elements of the film slide since it does make me laugh George Carlin is especially funny as Affleck's dad pop I'm home yeah like I give a [ __ ] you know thanks a lot Pop there's also a real poignancy to Carlin's casting given how much Smith's father loved Carlin's standup material and it circles back to Jersey girl being such a heartfelt tribute to Smith's family I can certainly see why the film would have some detractors but I think there's a lot of value here and frankly The Narrative of Jersey girl's failure is overstated the reviews would more accurately be described as mixed than bad which was pretty standard for romcoms in the mid 2000s and it still had its share of supporters including a three and a half star review from Roger rebert in hindsight it's less the Jersey girl was critically derided so much as it was a victim of the Affleck Lopez tabloid Obsession itself an expression of a disingenuous celebrity culture look at the film's razi nominations and it's transparently just an excuse to dump on benifer some more viewers lacking that context are much more likely to enjoy the film case in point when I told my partner I had watched Jersey girl she responded oh yeah I used to love that movie when I was a kid to which I responded uh what and she was like yeah me and my girlfriends we used to watch it all the time when I was little I was pretty shocked but when I mentioned it to some friends a buddy said his girlfriend told him the same thing maybe that's just an Ontario thing but I think it speaks to Jersey girl having an audience despite its reputation and the film has been subject to retrospective reassessment in the last few years I'm happy to join that wave I like this movie I wish Smith wasn't so guarded about Jersey Girls perception as a failure given the film clearly meant a lot to him and does show artistic growth alas failure was the perception and Smith went back to the well with clerks too but something crucial happened between Jersey girl and Clerk's 2 no Garson and that something was The 40-Year-Old Virgin this is a movie that looked a lot like the movies Kevin Smith made an R-rated comedy about Slackers and Manchild full of profane pop culture loaded dialogue and a Sentimental streak beneath the vulgarity the difference is that The 40-Year-Old Virgin made over $100 million domestically this wasn't a little Indie sensation this was a full-blown Blockbuster that inspired a new wave of American comedy film making writer director Jud appow would follow virgin as either director or producer with a series of similar sex comedies about love friendship and growing up there suddenly seemed to be a mainstream market for Smith style his next film would keep the mix mix of runch and Schmaltz telling the story of two lifelong friends who turn to pornography when they hit financial trouble and learn they actually love each other the lead would be played by Seth Rogan the breakout star of The appau Troop and fresh off an even bigger hit and knocked up along with a crop of other hot new comedic actors and a handful of Smiths old crew in the fall of 2008 Zach and Mary Make a Porno was going to break Kevin Smith out of his cult audience and into the mainstream that didn't happen instead Zach and Mary makea porno was bafflingly released on Halloween of all days and play second for the weekend behind High School Musical 3 in its second week of release reviews were certainly Kinder than they were to Jersey girl and the film would eventually limp to a 30 million domestic take which looks like a minor success at a glance but that doesn't account for the film's reported 30 million in marketing costs the story reported at the time was that Zack and Muay was Rogan's first dud and yet another failure for Kevin Smith and Smith again took it hard in one interview Smith confides that he fell into a depression after Zach and Mary flopped feeling guilty that he had let Seth down and insecure about his own standing in the film world that insecurity was not unwarranted given Zack and Mary's failure ended Smith's partnership with the Weinstein Company Smith blamed Harvey Weinstein for failing to adequately Market the film and while Weinstein has never spoken about the movie it's fair to assume he and his Partners were frustrated by its low box office in hindsight it's easy to take Smith's side over this especially since in the wake of the me too Revelations Smith is pledged to donate all royalties from Weinstein produced projects to women in film a nonprofit dedicated to advocating for women non-binary and trans people in the film industry that is unambiguously great but at the time Smith had effectively lost the film making home he had relied on since the mid90s and that had to have been destabilizing why did Zach and Mary Make a Porno flop Smith blamed bad marketing which might have been a factor though for what it's worth I think the film had some pretty great posters this one for example looks pretty standard at a glance but actually depicts Zach and Mary going down on each other that's fun apparently this poster is prohibited in the us but we got it here in Canada I also like the stick figure poster which plays up the film's provocative qualities really though the only reason the marketing was an issue at all was because of the title a lot of media Outlets flatly refuse to run ads for a movie with porno in the title and there was a minor moral Panic about children being introduced to pornography as a concept if they saw ads for a during sports games or at bus stops even Beyond these advertising restrictions though a movie Vo characters making porn is just going to be inherently off-putting to some audiences even audiences with a taste for runchy material like The 40-Year-Old Virgin is one thing that's about a guy who doesn't have sex this is a movie full of sex and pretty explicit sex at that that's a bigger leap Zack and Mary also doesn't have quite the same hook as the appti films it was aping it doesn't have the simple High concept of a 40-Year-Old Virgin or a not up and it doesn't fall neatly into a popular sub genre like super bad does with the teen sex comedy it's also worth noting while reviews for Zach and Mary were generally good they certainly weren't Raves the most acclaimed of the Appel comedy wave weren't just liked but beloved subject to High Praise and cracking year end top 10 lists no critics were calling Zach and Mary M a porno one of the best movies of 2008 personally I liked Zack and Mary back in the day and I still like it now Smith threads the needle between runchy sex comedy and love story pretty effectively resulting in a film loaded with craft humor that does not skimp on vulgarity in the slightest but is still in service of a sincere romance some of the writing is definitely contrived the film indulging in one of the most frustrating examples of the third act misunderstanding I've ever seen so egregious it makes both Zach and Marie seem to lack the basic emotional maturity needed for a relationship but Rogan and Elizabeth Banks do such a good job selling the characters and their feelings for each other that the movie still works I also appreciate that the film doesn't Flinch at making meie as much of a train wreck as Zach it feels honest to the relationship between the two and it makes her a better comedy Smith also adapts his own voice and sensibilities to the new shifts in comedy pretty well most obviously there's the presence of vicu Alum Jason Muse and Jeff Anderson both of which blend pretty seamlessly Into The Ensemble and as a fan it's fun to see both play different comedic characters and they still make me laugh I may not have watched this movie in over a decade but Lester explaining what a dutch rudder is to Zach has been firmly etched in my brain stylistically some scenes have that Apatow improv feel where Smith just let the actors riff and picked out the best bits in editing but other scenes are more clearly written there's a nice balance between the spontaneity and looseness of improv mixed with the control of specifically crafted setups and payoffs the film on the whole lacks the emotional heft of a Jersey girl but it does still have something to say most obviously the Arc of an underachieving slacker taking on responsibility and self-actualizing through making a movie is something Smith can relate to I think there's also something quite cogent to Zach's first attempt at a porno being a Star Wars parody before that blows up in his face and instead he has to make a film set in the coffee shop where he works shifting from a cheap fantasy of his geek interests to something which more accurately reflects his lived experience Zack and Mary might not reach the highs of the best of the appau inspired comedy era but it's a more than worthy entry into that cannon in a world where it was a hit it's easy to imagine Smith following suit with a series of similar comedies and settling into a reliable new phase of his career but that's not the world we live in Smith had tried a heartfelt dramedy and an appat inspired sex comedy only for both to blow up in his face maybe his new calling was to Simply Be a studio comedy director after a career spent exclusively directing his own screenplays Kevin Smith would brand someone else's words to the screen helming a buddy cop comedy for wner brothers the goal wasn't to express something personal or to evolve Styles but to make a functional generic comedy that could provide some Breezy entertainment that's not particularly interesting as a concept and there were signs such an approach was never going to work for Smith by his own admission Smith is not a very good director nobody ever asked me to direct scripts that that I don't write I mean they used to but I just say no and [ __ ] like that and I could barely direct the ones I do write why you want to put me in charge of one that I didn't the strength and identity of his movies has always been informed primarily by Smith's writing rather than what he was doing with the camera his directing style could best be summarized as filming the script as simply and unobtrusively as possible lots of standard shot reverse shot coverage or wides where the characters stand around in a line Smith's buddy cop movie eventually titled copout was never going to be a Kevin Smith movie to the extent his early Works were but hey as long as the script's good it might at least be funny right right right yeah so copout is one of the most infamously terrible movies released in my lifetime I've referred to Jersey girl and Zack and Mary Make a Porno as failures here but neither come close to the amount of vital C o Garner the film is technically Smith's highest grossing but also his most expensive at 30 million and that's before considering advertising the lobox office was not nearly as catastrophic however as the reviews which were almost uniformally terrible with even Smith Defenders unable to conjure enthusiasm for his hack needed buddy cop comedy and as if carrying the rage for all his failed comedies Smith bit back lashing out at film Critics on Twitter for picking on his little movie that didn't have any Ambitions Beyond making people laugh floating that he wasn't going to allow critics to see his movies anymore unless they paid him looking back this drama played a pretty big role in distancing me from Smith in the same way I've never been able to get too deep into Guns and Roses or have recently soured on CM Punk I just don't have the patience for these kinds of petty outbursts Smith's Feud with film critics seemed especially hypocritical given how pivotal they'd been to his own career before he had a legion of fans when Kevin Smith was just a guy from New Jersey who funded his own movie it was film critics who Champion clerks as something special and worthy of attention Janet Maslin and Peter Travers listed clerks among the best films of 1994 Charles Taylor and Andrew Johnston praised Chasing Amy for rethinking the romantic comedy Roger eert who gave positive reviews to all of the Smith movies he ever saw except two said he could imagine a Catholic God enjoying Dogma even when criticizing Smith for being too in love with his own dialogue he does so while comparing him to George Bernard Shaw Andrew sarus went as far as to make a case for why Kevin Smith might in fact be the next Martin scori I get that a lot of people writing about movies can be dicks and I do think a couple of Smith's films were harshly judged but for the man to turn around and act like the institution of film critics had always been against him is just flatly untrue the whole incident also demonstrates why Smith could never be an anonymous Studio director the guy is far too big a personality with a far too public platform to blend in as a cog in the machine lots of Studio comedies get ripped apart by critics but like David Dobkin isn't jumping on Twitter to give out about critics not liking the change up and we haven't even got to the behind the-scenes drama with Bruce Willis mere months after Cop Out bombed Smith would host a Q&A where he'd spend a substantial amount of time discussing all the ways Willis was obstructive uncooperative and a bully throughout the shoot sentiments he'd repeat many times over with increased ferocity in interviews and podcasts Willis never really responded publicly but reports suggest he was frustrated with Smith's lack of professionalism something Smith basically confirmed in his Q&A when he admitted he didn't know anything about camera lenses and how much that irritated Willis Smith's one attempt at working within the studio system ended with Smith publicly bashing the star of his movie and beefing with its critics now I've spent a lot of this video outlining why a film was a failure only to admit that I actually like it but that's not the case here copout is abysmal easily the worst film Smith had made up to that point and still the most soulless the man is completely unequipped for making any kind of action movie Set pieces are lifeless and geographically muddled I have no idea what Bruce Willis is supposed to be shooting at here or what effect it's having the whole thing is just noise the tone is also a mess all the material with Willis and Tracy Morgan is utterly unserious but the villain is this Colombian drug dealer whose goons engage in torture and execution style murders it's not especially violent in the grand scheme of things but it's way more intense than a movie like this warrants a lack of care is also evident in the film's Aesthetics Smith may never have been an especially visual director but there is a basic sense of filmmaking grammar in his prior work take this scene from Zach and muray where the characters are trying to mask their nervousness about shooting their sex scene by endlessly talking and making jokes most of the scene uses standard shot reverse shot coverage but Smith cuts to a wide two shot as the characters run out of things to say and just have to sit in their awkward silence before going back in for shot reverse shot as the characters actually confront what they're about to do this is all standard stuff but it's effective and uses Framing and editing to convey the emotions of the scene and Cop Out does not have that there is a a baseline of technical competence inherent to being a major studio production shots are at least in focus and don't have the boom mic in frame and some it's dude but it's also Thoughtless and that's also apparent in the film's soundtrack like you're going to play No Sleep till Brooklyn while the camera pans over to Brooklyn why not a scene where Willis and Morgan arrive in London set to London Calling or a sex scene to Let's get it on these songs don't say anything meaningful or specific and are emblematic of a hack needed Studio product the ultimate issue though is that copout is painfully unfunny the opening gag sees Tracy playing bad cop in an interrogation by just quoting lines from famous cop movies and then just famous movies in general and then cutting to Willis who says where the line's from that's barely a joke and yet this inan nothing of a gag is actually repeated later in the film most of the comedy is supposed to come from the character clash between its leads but Willis is clearly sleepwalking through the part and while Morgan is trying the script gives him nothing to work with the result is that Morgan yells a lot and Willis just sort of stands around it is a greatting movie to sit through one Smith moved away from with his next project far away for one Smith did a complete 180 on working within the system and would in fact choose to self-distribute his movie through a sort of traveling Road show through select cities before dropping it on VOD a move that was read as a deliberately antagonistic gesture by Smith towards Hollywood perhaps more significantly though the film would Mark Smith's first attempt to make something that wasn't a comedy red state would instead be a horror movie I Fear God you better believe I Fear God Red State is an odd little movie the film starts as a sex fueled Road movie about some horny teens looking for Action that doesn't feel too disimilar from Smith's prior work in at least subject matter if not style then the boys are kidnapped by the Five Points Trinity Church a religious cult who aimed to punish the boys for their wicked desires Through Torture and murder then ATF agents arrive led by John Goodman and the church defends itself with their arsenal of stored Firearms the two sides engage in a massive shootout until a trumpet blast Bellows through the scene and the congregation are convinced the Rapture is at hand we Flash Forward to Goodman explaining to his superiors that he and the team arrested the cult members and that the trumpet sound was just a prank by some local boys the congregation have been imprisoned without trial and will remain locked away cult leader Cooper sermonizes in his cell until a prisoner off camera yells for him to shut up shut the [ __ ] up cut to credits well while Smith's prior films were all character-based red state uses its characters as an entry point to a wild story and as vessels for addressing the culture wars of the 2000s the film is set in an unnamed Republican state in Middle America the villains are gun hording conspiracy theorists railing against the control of the government and the liberal media and their fundamentalist ideology is fueled by anti-gay hatred and violent control of sexuality I admire Smith's ambition to engage in political commentary and it's a credit that the core issues Red State addresses are still relevant over a decade later but as commentary the film is taid at best the Five Points Trinity Church is rather clearly based on the Westboro Baptist Church an Infamous hate group driven by similar fundamentalist values and anti-gay bigotry this organization was among the most hated groups of the 2000s and 2010s a collection of racist and anti-semitic monsters who led hate campaigns against the queer community and picketed the funerals of soldiers gay people and victims of school shootings and it's that widespread hatred that also makes them an uninteresting Target put simply everyone already agrees that these guys suck to the average person the Westboro Baptist Church were Fringe extremists and even right-wing commentator Bill O'Reilly and fellow homophobic Baptist preacher Jerry fwell thought the Westboro Baptist Church were freaks these people are such [ __ ] oh okay I'm going to let that ride because this is a passionate issue and because yes they are [ __ ] right so virtually no one takes umbrage with casting this group as a villains and consequently the film doesn't have much to say about the Westborough Baptist Church beyond that they're bad which like yeah we all know that and at the same time the film also validates its villain's parent OA the ATF agents are trigger happy murderers and the cult are incarcerated without a trial an injustice which clearly enrages John Goodman's character the closest thing the film has to a moral Authority so maybe the Five Points trendity church was right to stockpile a private Armory you know just in case of government tyranny the wishy-washy ideology makes a bit more sense when you know Smith's goal was to constantly upend audience expectations the movie starts by following horny teens before becoming torture porn and then an action movie similarly the film spends most of its time portraying the cult as unambiguous monsters only to make them victims as well at the 11th Hour this sort of twisting narrative might have landed better if Smith had the resources to follow through with his original intended ending where the angel of death and The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse arrive slaughtering church members and ATF agents alike and usering ing in the end times that kind of insane twist could have solidified Red State as a wild piece of unpredictable film making more concerned with the experience than making any kind of salient political point but with its more mundane wrap-up the film instead just feels muddled a parade of references to culture War issues and vague gesturing that they're bad without a sharp ideological stance Red State lives and dies by its execution as a genre movie which is kind of all right I guess the lack of firmly defined Central characters dulls much of the horror as we don't have anyone to really identify with and thus watch the violence with some Detachment the content is disturbing in theory but it isn't really scary more effective is the film's climactic shootout which is pretty sloppy in its geography but still works on the whole for one we have a figure to root for in John Goodman but Smith also effective conveys the chaos and consequences of the violence it's kind of shocking to see just a year after the lifeless action in copout that said Smith's visual limitations are also evident Red State employs desaturated digital cinematography which looks pretty ugly there's an argument to be made this was a deliberate choice to convey the horror of the material but there's a fine line between anesthetic ugliness which enhances the story and a film that's just kind of incompetent and given Red State's overreliance on handheld camera Shake I'm inclined to lean towards the ladder on the plus side though the performances from Goodman Michael Parks and Melissa Leo are all quite good so my reaction to Red State then and now is quite mixed and that mirrors the overall reception the film received some critics hated it others were more receptive to what Smith was attempting but across both extremes there was a shared sense of intrigue at Smith venturing so far outside his familiar Comfort zones whatever else you could say about the movie it was unlike anything else Kevin Smith had ever made and its pical film making stood in stark contrast to the vapid blandness of copout if Smith day making comedies were over maybe he could make the transition to being a horror filmmaker [Music] Tusk began Life as a podcast discussion where Smith and longtime producer Scott moer responded to an article about a man renting a room to someone willing to dress and perform as a walrus and riffing that into a horror story about a psychopath who lures an unsuspecting victim to his home drugs him and sews him into a walr suit climaxing on the psychopath Dawning a walrus suit of his own and fighting his victim a little over a year later the movie version would hit theaters like red State Tusk is another attempt to shock audiences with a wild bizarre and unpredictable story imagine a man turned into a walrus except red state was actually about something I criticized that film for its lack of real insight but it was still driven by Smith's own response as a religious man himself to seeing a group of hate mongers weaponize Christianity as a means to hurt others that was something Smith cared about Tusk is the nonsensical ramblings of a Stoner who doesn't realize his inside joke is a lot less funny to anyone that wasn't in the room getting high with him the horror of having your body irreversibly mutilated spikes when Justin Long's wall resuit is revealed and quickly dissipates when it's clear the film has no other ideas Beyond long moaning in agony and waddling around what remains is an irritating slog which hits a new low still when Johnny Depp shows up Depp had arrived in 2014 at something of a career low playing one-dimensional Quirk machines in increasingly desperate efforts to recapture the magic of Jack Sparrow and a wacky French Canadian detective proves a vessel for his worst instincts a flashback scene between Depp and Michael parks's villain is just unwatchable garbage where the creepy crawler thing in your toilet box yeah he a big old brown R clo yeah you're not going to shoot the spider as a inspector of thec uh I'm actually not authorized to discharge a weapon oh do you coach you coach the hockey bites no no I'm not the coach no Putin gives me the just the worst shits it's baffling to think people used to act like Jersey girl was some crime against Cinema and speaking of baffling I truly do not understand the point of the film's ending the film opens by introducing Justin long as this leazy podcaster whose whole gimmick is laughing at victims of accidents that have left them deformed this is seemingly a clear setup for Wallace having been deformed himself by the villain to become the freak who is laughed at Wallace even talks about how he's jealous of the kid who cut off his leg because of all the YouTube hits the guy got dramatic irony Wallace is going to get his wish and in doing so become the gawk that freak got it instead though the film ends with Wallace's best friend and ex-girlfriend crying over what has become of him and Wallace shedding a single tear watching his lover run off with his best friend huh what's with this weepy finale like yeah it's unexpected but only because it willfully flies in the face of what the film had set up and as bad as Tusk is Yoga hosers is so much worse the conclusion of Kevin Smith's horror Trilogy the ner of his career genuinely one of the worst movies I've ever seen the basic concept of two Canadian convenience store employees fighting miniature Nazi sausage men called bris is already a complete loser of an idea but the devil is in the details the obnoxious tone the Hideous visuals the terrible performances welcome back Johnny Depp and gratingly unfunny comedy I'm not sure how a guy who made some of my all-time favorite comedies arrived at thinking Canadian saying Sor and a boot was the height of humor but that must have been what Smith thought because his characters say those words constantly sorry Bo sorry Bo sorry Bo sorry did Smith or anyone else on set seriously think this was funny it's so embarrassing which is the best way to describe how it feels to watch yoga hosers and for all the ways yoga hosers fails there's one that especially annoys me one that doesn't sound like a big deal at all but is emblematic of how poorly thought out the film is okay a key aspect of the Little Critters R A Muk sub genre is establishing the ordinary locations that said evil Little Critters will eventually wreak havoc in like in Gremlins we spend time in the Peltzer family kitchen before Mama Peltzer goes to town on the Gremlins a big part of the fun is seeing orderly spaces become anarchic and while yoga hosers does introduce a lot of ordinary locations the only one the br's invade is the convenience store why aren't there scenes of the bry's wreaking havoc at the library or the yoga studio or Colleen's bedroom why set up all these locations if you aren't going to use them why make a movie about evil Little Critters running a muck only for them to barely feature in the movie why aren't they running a muck this all speaks to how half-ass yoga hosers is the basic ideas are already terrible to begin with but everything about their execution technically and creatively shows a severe lack of effort to the point that I'm not really sure why the film was made at all outside of Smith wanting to work with his daughter and I will at least concede Harley Quinn Smith and fellow nepo baby Lily Rose Depp are both pretty good in the film at least considering what they have to work with but I don't think I can overstate just how bad the movie is if copout embodied the worst of Studio blandness yoga hosers embodies the worst of indie film making free of all restraint and lacking competence with his failures to situate himself as either a comedy or horror director post views Universe it would be easy to look at Smith once again returning to to Jay and Silent Bob cynically but given how unambiguously personal both films are I am inclined to give Smith the benefit of the doubt to see his return as an honest expression of his heart and soul Clerk's 3 and Jay and Silent Bob reboot are certainly more meaningful to its creator than any film he's made since at least red state if not since Clerk's 2 could these films actually be good a return to form for the director I so once love NOP no they're pretty bad they're certainly better than most of what Smith made in the 2010s but they're still lousy the films Mark more than just Smith returning to the VIIs universe but Smith self- cannibalizing his own career each film is predicated on recreating the movies from Smith's Glory Days Jane Silent Bob reboot constantly lampshading the fact that it's functionally the same movie as Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back Clerk's 3 reenacting scenes from the original film as part of Randall's efforts to make a movie about working at a quick stop these callbacks are obviously meant to be self-aware but being self-aware isn't the same as being good there's an inherent diminishing return to hearing any joke repeated and that's magnified tenfold when it's repeated decades later by guys who really should have moved on by now moreover the callbacks work against the respective films Jay and Silent Bob reboot merges its commentary on Hollywood reboots and its commentary on Parenthood to make a point that children are the rebooted version of their parents a chance to be better than what came before but that falls apart given the film is constantly hammering home how reboots are cynically made cash grabs that are in fact worse than what they Spawn from and that's an ideal Jane Silent Bob reboot takes to heart as it's substantially worse than Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back it's less funny but it's also less techn Tech Ally competent and I say that as someone fully aware that Strike Back was one of the sloppiest films of Smith's early years but that film's even lighting and balanced tones at least made for a warm and mildly Pleasant look well suited to a light comedy but reboot looks hideous too highly saturated and too sharp when combined with Jay and Silent Bob's mugging the results are frankly garish you really feel that visual downgrade in any scene which directly mirrors one from Strikes Back it looks more like a Super Bowl commercial parody than a real movie Clerks 3's recreating of old scenes is both more and less Justified more because the plot involves making a movie that is functionally Kevin Smith's Clerk's so it makes sense they'd have to reenact the old gags less because those same gags do not land the same way when the characters are old men don't get me wrong the the jokes and scenarios in clerks are funny in concept but they're underpinned by the experience of being a young man technically an adult but really just a big teenager struggling to take responsibility and grow up that's funny when the characters are in their 20s but hits a different sadder note when they're in their 50s clerks 3 is at least a bit more visually appealing than reboot but the trade-off is it features some of the most perplexing editing of Smith's career Smith has edited most of his movies but his cutting has typically been pretty simple and unobtrusive Clerk's 3's editing is actively distracting Smith will set up two cameras for dialogue scenes and cut between both without Rhyme or Reason it's easy to be critical of Smith's old movies for just letting the camera run as the actors talk for the lack of visual imagination but at least that restraint let the scene speak for itself without Smith getting in its way I will conce though that clerks 3 is certainly the better of these two films but it's also the one I find more frustrating whatever you want to say about J and Silent Bob reboot it's basically just another dumb J and Silent Bob adventure and it's hard to get too worked up over that yes it's also Smith's attempt to reflect on fatherhood and those elements are among the better parts of the movie but the overall film is so scattered silly and bursting within jokes for Smith's existing audience that I can only take it so serious ly Clerk's 3 is different the film's personal elements with regard to Legacy and mortality are far heavier than the parental themes in reboot and the overall film also holds together more strongly as a narrative Dante and Randall are also characters that mean a lot to me and their prior films were as interested in them as people as they were telling jokes and Clerk's 3 does uphold that tradition it is a film which takes Dante and Randall's lives pardon the pun as serious as a heart attack it wants to say something meaningful about life art and the Legacy Kevin Smith will leave behind and the resulting film is extremely depressing to be clear I don't mean depressing in that shitty YouTuber critic way where the movie is like so bad it's depressing I mean that the content of the film is straight up miserable opening with my chemical romances the Black Parade sets an appropriately Bleak tone for a movie where we learn and spoilers ahead Dante's pregnant wife was killed in a car accident shortly after the events of clerk's 2 and has left Dante a shell of himself where the same heart attack which Randall barely survived ends up killing Dante the last conversation the two share before the attack being a bitter fight and whose final image evokes the ending of clerk's 2 except this time Randall is left alone and hopeless without his best friend Clerk's wanted and two also had a dramatic side but it was pretty subdued developing in the background while the comedy took Center Stage only to come to a boil in a third act confrontation Clerk's 3 has no sense of balance every other scene is straining for tears and it makes the goofy humor feel in congruous like unless you're Wes Anderson you probably shouldn't set so many scenes of your comedy in a graveyard it's hard to laugh aborus when we just left Dante Weeping at his wife's headstone I also can't help but view a lot of this dark material cynically Becky's offscreen death in particular strikes me less as a creative challenge for Dante's character than it does an absence of creativity how do we make a Clerk's movie where Dante has a wife and kid eh they just die off camera and given Rosario Dawson herself claimed to be surprised by Becky's fate given how much she liked the character I I don't think the decision was a logistical one due to having limited time with Dawson and if the point was to challenge Dante why have him fail so horribly Becky's ghost tells Dante that he needs to get over her death and start living life again a clear setup for an arc where Dante will find a new lease on life maybe through filmmaking with Randall instead Dante just has a heart attack and dies his last scene is set in a movie theater afterlife watching scenes from from the old Clerk's movies before ascending to heaven and look I am not immune to Nostalgia the first time I saw this movie I did get a little choked up watching Dante see his own life rendered on film but the uplift and Schultz of the scene is fundamentally inappropriate in context this is not a man reflecting on a life well-lived it's a man reflecting on a life of misery that's at least finally over and contrasting this Relentless suffering Clerk's 3 is also overflowing with references not just this Smith own body of work but also Star Wars and comic books and all the other geek media the man loves Smith's films have always had a firm planting in geek culture but that culture looks and reads fundamentally different now when nerd IPS dominate our pop culture landscape than it did in the 9s a genx are obsessing over Star Wars in 1994 has a different vibe than a 50-year-old man obsessed over Star Wars in the 2020s and that's before even considering how social media has again fundamentally changed geek culture but apart from referencing more recent media like The Last Jedi or the Mandalorian Smith doesn't really address the new nerd landscape and in refusing to do so leaves a lot on the table I'm far from the first person to suggest this but why isn't Randall The Last Jedi YouTuber given the dude's endless and name rants about pop culture there's no way he wouldn't at least try it and I can't decide if it's funnier if Randall is pulling the quartering numbers or if basically no one is watching but going down that road might also mean addressing the uglier parts of nerd culture the entitlement cyber bullying and rampant toxicity that have fostered in geek communities and Smith is not willing to go there his references are in part a means of pandering to his existing audience which share his nerdy predilections not Challen alling them on that note it's worth noting for as much as Kevin Smith is now arguably more known as an avatar for Geek culture than for being a movie director the references in his older movies were kept to a minimum the original clerks only has one conversation about Star Wars the famous debate about whether the independent contractors building the second death star in Return of the Jedi were innocent bystanders of the rebels attack or culpable for choosing to work with the empire it's a funny scene and a pretty thoughtful reference for one it reflects how friends talk about movies when they've basically pick the bones clean and have fallen into discussing the most minor and borderline nonsensical details basically the same thing as my podcast second the scene also demonstrates a sort of quiet resistance a means for Dante and Randall to seiz some of their time back from their bosses by bullshitting while at work most importantly though the debate over culpability reflects Clerk's greater thematic tension is Dante subservient to his employer or is he responsible for his own actions this silly conversation about Star Wars sets the stage for Randall's far more direct challenge at film's end clerk 3's references lack any such meaning they don't reflect anything deep about the characters or the themes of the film they simply perform Kevin Smith's geek membership and they also just do not let up I always pray to crom who's crom that's Conan The Barbarians God Batman The Avengers Wonder Woman yeah what about Thor Thor's a god Thor is a fictional character who flies throughout her space oh buddy no I mean isn't he kind of like the Optimus Prime of evil you don't have to condescend to me you can just say Megatron and that's when I [ __ ] you not Luke [ __ ] Skywalker shows up thank you for saving my life you're like the Batman of heart surgery there was an 80% chance you and I were never going to talk about Star Wars again I mean I knew I was never the Luke but I thought I was at least the hand then who am I the chewy I think Elias is more the chewy no which one's lobot he's the one with the headphones who looks like a dad who's trying to be a DJ Jay and Silent Bob are clearly the C3PO and R2-D2 Blade Runner I like that thanks what's a Blade Runner so sorry about the mess that was from Star Wars long time ago and a galaxy far far away and by The Departed I mean Dante Hicks not the scorsi picture that was pretty perfect right up until that stupid shot of the rat at the end I was going to pull from the eulogy that Kirk gave Spock in the wrath of KH but I've always been more of a Star Wars fan your best friend is dead and you're still thinking about lightsabers if Zach and Mary makea porno was a film about a guy discarding the safety of geek culture and making his own movie Clerk's 3 wallows in that culture which is ironic given how that culture has affected the kinds of films Smith makes Clerk's 3 ends with Randall having completed his movie but before it sees any kind of release in real life Smith took Clerk's to Sundance where it was picked up by Miramax who gave it a small theatrical release where it became a modest hit the movie Smith made for $27,000 was purchased for over2 200,000 and went on to gross over 4 million launching Smith as a director who in turn influenced a whole new generation of filmmakers and the sad truth is no such future awaits Randall regardless of his film's artistic merits for one a vulgar comedy about pop culture literate Slackers is a lot less novel in 2022 than in 19 94 but the broader film Market just doesn't allow for a clerks anymore at best Randall's movie might find a place as another piece of content on a streamer but no distributor is paying hundreds of thousands of dollars for it and it certainly isn't playing in theaters who's going to pay $15 to see a movie where two guys stand around talking after a decade of geek franchises have conditioned audiences to think movies about characters talking don't warrant the big screen the way high budget spectacle like comic book movies do why see clerks when you can see Spider-Man why see before midnight when you can see Man of Steel maybe that's a petty gotcha But the irony that the properties which Smith so unabashedly loves and supports have also crowded out the types of movies he makes is a rich one and one I wish clerks 3 actively addressed how does it feel when the art you love as an audience stands in opposition to the art you make as an artist addressing this question would have involved bridging Smith's self- commentary with the film's numerous nerd culture references that would have made for a more cohesive film and probably a more nuanced exploration of Smith's Life and Legacy too as it stands however Clerk's 3 is confused at once a winking celebration of Smith's body of work and also an expression of Despair at a life wasted I won't pretend there's not interest to be found there I keep coming back to the film's ending and wondering if leaving Randall trapped in a world of shallow nonsense is meant as some pointed confession from Smith if Clerk's to his acceptance and Smith's place in the world perhaps Clerk's 3 is an expression of the pain and stagnation that place has brought him that's certainly personal though not the most intuitive choice for a comedy and if that is the point then the film lacks the coherence to deliver it fully too steeped in Nostalgia and faux attempts at uplift that its messages are muddled I was wrong 6 years ago when I said Kevin Smith didn't have anything personal to say anymore as he clearly does I'm just not sure he knows what that is so I've now seen every Kevin Smith movie well except Kroy was here his horror an ology that was released exclusively as an nft but as far as I'm concerned that doesn't count and I refuse to support that crypto garbage while working on this video I fully expected to end things cynically that Smith's returned to both the VIIs universe and to personal film making had failed in both regards and having worked my way through his entire filmography I could finally say I was done with Kevin Smith but as I was writing the script sabon films announced they'd be Distributing Smith's new movie A Coming of Age comedy about a pair of teens who spend the day at the theater while one also pursues a crush and God help me I find myself intrigued look I feel like Charlie Brown trying to kick a football right now I have no reason to expect this new film will be good Smith hasn't made a movie I've liked in 16 years and in that same time frame he's made several I actively hated but the simple premise and seeming focus on characters and emotions does give me hope Smith's best efforts to escape the shadow of J Silent Bob have been the simple character rooted comedies after all he isn't selling out to make Studio direct nor going all in on some Stoner riffing nonsense he's making a movie about people and relationships or at least that's what it seems like at the moment the film doesn't even have a trailer yet so this is still a lot of speculation on my part but the early notes are encouraging if you're watching this from the future and the movie turned out to be a stealth yoga hoser sequel feel free to comment this didn't age well if nothing else Smith trying again is admirable to me Smith has been talking about how he isn't really a filmmaker and should just stick to podcasting since at least the late 2000s and yet he's never stopped making movies no matter how many times his films have been branded failures he keeps coming back and failure is itself self transient M Ratz is so widely beloved by Smith's fan base that it's easy to forget that it was considered a major flop and artistic disappointment after clerks Jersey girl is slowly being reevaluated hell even Tusk has a cult audience I have my issues with a great many of Smith's movies and I'll never love him the way I did when I was 14 but I was a fool to think I'd ever really be done with Kevin Smith I don't take his word as gospel anymore and I I can't guarantee I'll be first in line when his next movie comes out but I will always root for him to succeed good luck Kevin snans [Music] a [Music]

Channel: Eyebrow Cinema

Views: 168,955

Keywords: Clerks, Kevin Smith, Clerks III, Jay and Silent Bob, View Askew, View Askewniverse, Dante and Randall, Clerks II, Jersey Girl, Zack and Miri, Cop Out, Red State, Tusk, Moose Jaws, Yoga Hosers, Jay and Silent Bob Reboot, Bluntman and Chronic, Mallrats, Chasing Amy, Dogma, Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back, Eyebrow Cinema, video essay, Kevin Smith Revisited, Killroy was Here, MCU, Marvel, geek culture, Judd Apatow, Seth Rogen, Jason Mewes, Scott Mosier, podcast, smodcast

Id: l7f_wREVOqg

Length: 61min 0sec (3660 seconds)

Published: Thu May 23 2024