CLERKS (1994)
"This job would be great if it wasn't for the fucking customers."
2.5 out of ****
Starring Brian O'Halloran, Jeff Anderson, Marilyn Ghigliotti, Lisa Spoonhauer Written & Directed by Kevin Smith Cinematography by David Klein
Kevin Smith is a frustrating director. The man clearly has talent: last year's CHASING AMY was a smart, funny, surprisingly wise film. But the wretched MALLRATS and the uneven CLERKS seem to be the work of a lazy writer, someone with inspiration and skill, but without the discipline to keep his work at a consistently high level of quality. CLERKS was Smith's debut, and, in a sense, it anticipates both CHASING AMY and MALLRATS. It is a hit-and-miss affair (with the emphasis on miss): moments of CHASING AMY's wit are interspersed throughout tedious stretches of MALLRATS' juvenile humour.
The premise is simple. We follow an eventful day in the life of Dante (Brian O'Halloran), a clerk in a convenience store. He is visited by his girlfriend and ex-girlfriend (Marilyn Ghigliotti, Lisa Spoonhauer), attends a wake, plays hockey on the roof of the store, and discusses RETURN OF THE JEDI, auto-fellatio, and the worthlessness of guidance counsellors, usually accompanied by Randal (Jeff Anderson), the clerk from the adjacent video store. Jay and Silent Bob (Jason Mewes, Kevin Smith) hang around outside the store, occasionally dropping in. And, of course, Dante and Randal must deal with obnoxious customers, like a man in search of perfect eggs and a man who won't stop talking about tabloid headlines--at least not until someone spits water in his face.
Much of the film consists of nothing more than a few characters relaxing and talking. Smith, fortunately, has a flair for dialogue, and isn't afraid to let his characters be smart and verbose. Some of the lines are good (high school is about "algebra, bad lunch, and infidelity"); others fall flat. The actors, unfortunately, aren't quite up to the challenge of making the dialogue sound authentic. Mostly, it sounds like exactly what it is--contrived, scripted lines. O'Halloran is quite good, but the rest of the cast are not able to deliver their lines in a natural, unstilted manner, and often sound like they are reading from a teleprompter.
They are not helped by Smith's direction: there are many static, long takes of characters simply talking and doing little else. Woody Allen has used this technique to great effect, but while Smith may have a flair for dialogue, as a director he is nowhere near Allen's level. The film, as a result, grows tedious after a while, not helped by some recurring jokes which lose whatever charm they had very, very quickly. The frequent use of 'chapter' titles like "Perspicacity" and "Malaise" is particularly annoying, being both pointless and unfunny, as is a recurring joke about shoe polish.
The film as a whole is too contrived for my taste. Smith tries too hard to be funny: the people who visit the store are caricatures and the situations are exaggerated, telegraphing the humour. A less forced approach could have resulted in a funnier film: allowing the situations to develop naturally, allowing the customers to seem real, would have given us a better pay-off. Smith has a gift for observing the natural interactions between people, yet seems afraid to let them remain natural. And some sequences are simply tedious, like the rooftop hockey game. CLERKS is a good idea, poorly executed.
That this movie was made at all--and then distributed--is something of a triumph, however, given its infinitesimal budget and less-than-stellar production values. And Smith's profane, self-indulgent dialogue is a refreshing contrast to all those Hollywood films where dialogue is used only to further the plot. But the intended effect is better than the final result, and after CHASING AMY, CLERKS' pleasures seem even less rewarding. Let's hope Smith is able to make more films as good as his last one, and doesn't get lazy again.
A Review by David Dalgleish (February 9/98)
dgd@intouch.bc.ca
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