Clerks should never have been a franchise. Kevin Smith's 1994 debut film is a small-scale comedy about two friends working dead-end jobs in adjacent retail stores, dealing with annoying customers and taking stock of their lives. It became an indie film sensation after its premiere at the Sundance Film Festival, launching Smith's career as a major new filmmaking voice alongside the likes of Quentin Tarantino and Robert Rodriguez.
Except Smith never broke into the mainstream the same way some of his peers did, and much of his career has been spent remixing and rehashing those same original characters and storylines. At this point, Smith exists in a wholly insular world, making movies almost exclusively for his existing fanbase, which he's cultivated via a media empire of podcasts and live appearances. In that context, Clerks III is the equivalent of Star Wars: The Force Awakens, a long-awaited return to the cinematic universe's beloved origin.
Smith values his devotees, so Clerks III is full of fan service, from the reheated banter between lifelong friends Dante (Brian O'Halloran) and Randal (Jeff Anderson) to the cameos from Smith's podcasting partners to the references to other Smith movies. It often feels like a love letter by Smith, to Smith, and it's remarkably sentimental for a movie about a pair of man-children making dick jokes.
Following the events of 2006's Clerks II, Dante and Randal have spent the last 16 years as co-owners of the Quick Stop convenience store in their hometown of Leonardo, New Jersey. Smith immediately establishes that Dante's love interest from the last movie, the near-saintly Becky (Rosario Dawson), has died, along with their unborn daughter, which is a rather morbid way to begin an ostensible comedy. It's not because Dawson is too busy or too famous to appear in a Clerks sequel, though: She's still in the movie, as a spectral vision who guides Dante in his life choices.
Dante faces some difficult circumstances when Randal suffers a serious heart attack, just as Smith himself did in 2018. Newly reminded of his own mortality, Randal decides to finally do something with his life, dedicating himself to making a movie based on his experiences at the Quick Stop. Essentially, Randal decides to make Clerks, complete with verbatim recreations of many scenes from the original movie, with the original actors.
Never mind that Clerks makes no sense as a movie about middle-aged regret, rather than twentysomething angst. The movie within the movie gives Smith an excuse to wallow in nostalgia, while making occasional self-deprecating jokes about his own shortcomings as a director. It's a haphazard account of micro-budget filmmaking, though, which Smith depicted more lovingly in 2008's underrated Zack and Miri Make a Porno.
O'Halloran and Anderson, who have rarely acted outside of Smith-adjacent projects, retain their chemistry as friends, but they're not up to selling the blatant sappiness of the movie's final third. Trevor Fehrman, who returns from Clerks II as the duo's irritatingly earnest sidekick Elias, hasn't acted onscreen since 2006, and his presence is just as awkward. Jason Mewes and Smith are a reliable comedy duo as weed dealers Jay and Silent Bob, although they get in on the uncomfortable emotional outpourings, too.
There are funny moments in Clerks III, which relies much less on conspicuously vulgar shock value than Clerks II did, but they're largely outweighed by the smug, disingenuous self-regard. Smith closes the movie by giving a literal speech over the end credits, like he's accepting some lifetime achievement Oscar he'll never actually receive. Like the rest of the movie, it's a loving tribute to a legacy that probably should have been left alone. ♦
Clerks III
