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Kevin Smith's films are distinguished by a comic sensibility that is at once eminently urbane and pathetically puerile, fueled by a worldview that overflows with offhanded insight and yet remains too quick to acknowledge this insight for its own benefit. Examining his debut feature seriously, what can we ascertain from a film about grocery-store clerks who endlessly pontificate on sex, ethics, politics, and the architectural intricacies of Lucas's Death Star? Judging from the dialogue, at least, we can immediately sense a talent desperate to be qualified as "intelligent," in the strictest sense of the term, and though it would be grossly inconsiderate to dismiss Clerks as a "stupid" motion picture (it is indeed almost as canny and clever as it makes itself out to be), it's difficult to ignore a side of Smith's brainy, sesquipedalian screenplay that emerges slightly cloying alongside his unique brand of scatological humor. Nonetheless, we can still appreciate and enjoy Smith's pretensions for what they are, especially considering the fact that Clerks' most dominant virtue is the sheer presence of its characters, lovingly worked out from the forge of the writer-director's experience with eccentricity. |
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Clerks |
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capsule review by André de Alencar Lyon |
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Kevin Smith |
