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I am a "huge" Kevin Smith fan, and I will see just about anything he has his hands in, especially when Jay and Silent Bob are involved. I was anxious to see Clerks II for this reason, even though Clerks was my least favorite of the Jay and Silent Bob films. I wasn't sure what to expect, and what I got was far beyond any expectation I had.

The movie starts about ten years following our first venture in to Quick Stop and our first meeting with Dante and Randal. Dante still works at Quick Stop and Randal at the video store, and other than the fact that he's probably renting people DVDs now instead of videos, nothing has changed. But when disaster strikes and destroys the shops, the boys are forced to find other employment, not an easy task for two slackers who have spent their entire adult lives working in a convenience and a video store.

The boys eventually find employment at Mooby's, a fast food restaurant, first introduced in Smith's fabulous "Dogma". Becky, the store's manager, forms a bond with Dante, but she and Randall do not have the same fondness for each other.

Dante has finally begun to realize how stagnant his life has become and plans to move out of town with his fiancee, but Randall is still, even though he's well in to this thirties, not ready to grow up and has no problem telling Dante about it every chance he gets. Things between the friends go from bad to worse when Dante and Becky start to develop feelings for each other.

Jay and Silent Bob are a major factor in Clerks II, which thrilled me. The two have just gotten out of rehab, so they are no longer doing drugs, but that doesn't mean they can't still sell drugs. Once Quick Stop disappears, they need to find a new hangout and, of course, Mooby's is the place to go.

I thought Clerks II was seriously one of the funniest movies I had ever seen. Yes, there were definitely some scenes I could have done without (she says squirming as the Donkey comes to mind), but I'm not above closing my eyes when something grosses me out. The humor was well worth any of the tasteless jokes.

Dante and Randall were hilarious and interacted even better now than they did in the first film. Both obviously struggled with the growing up and moving on thing, Randall especially, and it could have been done in a sappy, unrealistically emotional way, but instead Smith was able to infuse the comedy and the emotion together seamlessly without any awkwardness.

I won't say that Brian O'Halloran and Jeff Anderson are great actors by any means, but they definitely held their own against the talents of Rosario Dawson. Both Kevin Smith and Jason Mewes were fabulous as the always a riot Jay and Silent Bob.
I liked the premise of the two going through rehab and not indulging themselves in drugs but still dealing, which as immoral as some think it may be, is part of what always made them so funny.

As in all of Smith's films, there were cameos by his buddies, Ben Affleck, Jason Lee, Ethan Suplee, Scott Mosier, and his wife Jennifer Schwalbach Smith. We also got glimpses of Wanda Sykes and Kevin Weisman who gets in to a hilarious argument with Randal about which is better, Star Wars or Lord of the Rings.

I read a blog written by Kevin Smith a while ago that said he had intended never to write another Jay and SB movie, but when Jason Mewes went in to rehab to kick his heroine habit, Smith promised him he'd let him play Jay one more time if he'd stay off drugs. Mewes delivered, and so did Smith, and I for one am glad they both kept their promise.

Learn more about this author, Debbie N.
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