Brian Christopher O’Halloran, Jeff Anderson, Jason Mewes, Kevin Smith, Rosario Dawson
Directed by Kevin Smith
Rated R
More than a decade after the first movie was released, writer/director Kevin Smith has finally released his first sequel, and it’s a winner. Disgruntled blue-collar workers Dante Hicks (O’Halloran) and Randal Graves (Anderson) are back alongside many other typical Smith faces such as Ben Affleck and Jason Lee.
Again, the film revolves around the witty banter between Dante and Randal, the latter usually playing devil’s advocate while Dante takes the side of the inherit goodness of man. However, the sequel is somehow funnier than the first with a clever change from black and white to color in the opening sequence.
Dante has come to the end of his rope working crap jobs and has to make a decision for action, but doesn’t know what that should be.
Of course, while we wait to see how Dante’s decisions pan out, we are engaged with Jay (Mewes) and Silent Bob (Smith) bits that can cause fits of laughter so hard they are best approached with caution.
Smith’s abilities with creating strong, hilarious dialogue for characters who are so real you feel you know them have been well known, but never as fully accomplished as they are here. By using most of the same actors in all of his movies, he creates a world that the audience becomes at home in so that, when new faces are introduced, the feeling is the same as meeting a new friend.
In Clerks II, Fehrman filled this slot with the naive young geek Elias. His scenes are some of the memorable and shockingly hilarious.
All in all, this is Smith’s shining moment and the most intelligent comedy to come out in a long time.