Clerks II (2006, Kevin Smith)

When it comes to my slavish reverence for comedy-- my Achille's Heel genre for a number of years at this point-- my softest spot is for Kevin Smith, he of fanboys so devoted that it's almost funny to see characters voice his anti-fanboy rants. He's comparable to my other soft spot, Judd Apatow (hi, I'm Drew, the only blogger who actually enjoyed Drillbit Taylor), in that both limit themselves to very specific casts, crews, and demographics, and have an affinity for blending sentiment with weiner jokes. More to the point, Smith and Apatow aren't particularly accomplished directors, in the visual sense, and that's not necessarily a knock: they both write potent dialogue delivered by (mostly) funny people, and movie magic for them is pointing the camera and watching it happen. So, given my avowed Apatow devotion, I suppose you kinda could've predicted that I'd be a K-Smith fan (or apologist, given how you feel about the man)-- not of the rabid variety, but yeah, I own 'em all (well, okay, not Jersey Girl, or that animated "Clerks" set), and don't find it too trying to go back to the well with mild frequency.

That being said, I've been mulling it over, and I think there's a chance Clerks II is Smith's best. Revisiting his 1994 little-picture-that-could, Smith avoids total redux by at least changing locales (the Quick Stop has burned down, and Dante and Randal have taken to being snarky and having their pop-culture-laced back-and-forths behind the counter at their local Mooby's) and sprucing up the cast a bit (welcome new additions include Trevor Fehrman's priceless evangelical Transformers fan Elias and a glowing Rosario Dawson as manager Becky). Early on, the movie proves itself to be quite funny. Jeff Anderson's Randal's screwup snark, presumably honed by 12 years of being snarky and screwing up, remains as glib and bawdy as ever, his penchant for ratatat vulgarity and sacred-cow screeds the high point of most of this movie's guffaws. Elias, too, is a singular comic creation, a soft-spoken, chaste, lovable nerd who, as performed by Fehrman, hits every note perfectly. (One could wish for more screen time, though.) Meanwhile, as the belly laughs continue out front, Dante (Brian O'Halloran, still a charmingly clunky actor) and Becky gab wistfully over a toenail-painting session. You see, it's Dante's last day before he leaves for Florida and a complacent existence with his dream-girl fiancee, but there's more than meets the eye with Becky and blah blah blah.

I know it all sounds pretty standard-issue, and it is, really. When it came out, Clerks II left a lot of people talking about it's startling emotional heft, which makes me wonder: have people really forgotten about Chasing Amy already? But Smith blends pretty seamlessly here. There's an endless parade of vulgarity, lots of Jay and Silent Bob doing their Jay and Silent Bob thing, obligatory screeds on pop culture (delivered by characters that are obvious mouthpieces for Smith's personal views), and a few cameos. But there's also an impeccably directed musical number smack in the middle, and near the end, the film's foulest, vilest scene (it involves a donkey) arrives sandwiched between two that go directly for the gut. It's an interesting mix, and that Smith managed to pull it off while making a really valid point about the horrors of aging is nothing if not impressive.

The humor kills-- during the first half of the movie, jokes arrive at metronome-precise intervals, and always hit like a perfect cymbal crash. The rhythm of Smith's comedic dialogue really hasn't been this good since the first Clerks, and part deux lands punchlines like waves on the Jersey shore (my personal favorite is the oblivious Randal's "porch monkey" faux pax, as much for the dumbfounded looks of everyone involved as for the actual verbal content).

But the drama works too. O'Halloran rarely sells it, but he lands a knockout punch right before the aforementioned musical number (set to the Jackson's "ABC", of course), in a perfect shot that manages to show him falling in love without, amazingly, telling us through expository dialogue. Rosario, of course, can sell anything; ostensibly, she's above the material, but she's got a natural screen presence and she positively glows throughout the film. Surprisingly, some of the film's heft comes from Anderson as the sarcastic, guarded Randal-- there's a scene near the end that, improbably, comes out pitch-perfect, because Anderson plays it so well. He's actually kind of wonderful in this, so attuned with the film's flippancy _and_ sentiment that he kinda carries it at times.

The film missteps, of course. Again, O'Halloran is hardly a master thespian, but I understand that there's a film-school-buddy chemistry there that's needed for the picture to succeed (well, that and you can't really replace the main character without looking at least a little bit retarded). But Jennifer Schwalbach? Smith again casts his wife (she had a role in Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back), but this time in a far more crucial role: Dante's meal-ticket fiancee Emma. I understand the necessity for Smith to make his films with people he likes, but really, there had to be someone else in his repertory that he could've snagged for this role. What, was Joey Lauren Adams at a Jennifer Tilly soundalike convention?

But small potatoes. Clerks II is Smith's most accomplished movie-- the gravity of 30s angst hits hard, all the jokes make their mark, and at the end of the day it's a tremendous little feel-good comedy. There's a real heart inside this coarse little picture, and Smith and Company coax it out with relative ease.

Rating: **** (out of five)

Grindhouse: Planet Terror (2007, Robert Rodriguez) and Death Proof (2007, Quentin Tarantino)

If there's one thing I won't forgive the American people for in the first decade of the 2000s-- well, next to electing Bush twice-- it's that people didn't turn up in droves to watch perhaps the coolest movie experiment in all of modern cinema, Rodriguez and Tarantino's resurrection of the trash cinema double feature, Grindhouse. Because it's not like other movies, where, if no one goes, who gives a damn? They'll be your little secret, and you can make one-by-one converts of all of your friends.

But no-- poor box-office for Grindhouse means that, for the conceivable future, the Grindhouse experience will be lost. Planet Terror and Death Proof exist just fine-- but not Grindhouse. Having seen the film a few times during it's theatrical run in 2007, I can say that it was a singular cinematic experience, a trashy tunnel of thrills, a neato genre exercise. The "Restricted" title cards, the missing reels, the scratchy prints, and best of all, the trailers-- oh, those glorious fake teasers for woefully nonexistent b-horrors, all gaudy cameos and wink-nudge sadism. (Rodriguez's trailer for Machete, an imaginary star vehicle for Danny Trejo, remains on the Planet Terror DVD looking an awful lot like an overblown Desperado, come to think of it.)

But what of the movies? Fortunately, both directors pass with flying colours, albeit with different approaches to the material. And fortunately, you can put together a makeshift Grindhouse double feature if you so desire-- it'll just take a little more time, as both platters are "extended and unrated", thus stretching the running time to damn-near four hours.

Rodriguez is up first with Planet Terror, and it's clear that his grasp on the concept is immaculate. From the outset, there's a tough-talking go-go dancer, a mysterious stranger in a truck, bubbling flesh, and a testicle thief. As the story gets rolling-- something about gas that turns people into zombies, but who cares, really?-- Rodriguez propels his vision into Evil Dead-and-beyond levels of cartoonish splatter. Boils rupture, limbs fly, intestines ooze, bodies pop like water balloons. And he remains true to the trash-cinema tropes of the idea, all campy cleavage-cams, delicious one-liners, and, in the film's single most hilarious scene, missing reels. Rodriguez has done what I bet lots of prestige directors wish they had the balls to do-- he's understood the joy, the campy glee in sitting around and watching an ostensibly-awful-but-incredibly-fun movie with friends, and made his own ostensibly-awful-but-incredibly-fun homage. Freddy Rodriguez is the mvp here, playing it earnest all the way, but points to Bruce Willis for sending-up an intensely Bruce Willis-y role.

Yep, RR wins for slavishly recreating an old, sub-Living Dead shocker-- but for sheer craft, Tarantino swoops in once again. His Death Proof is, essentially, a Tarantino film. Sure, he scratches the surface of the terror-on-the-open-road thriller, but when you get right down to it, he packs it with a few things: lots of women, women who like to talk about obscure pop culture, moments that are obscenely, gloriously retro, an ostensibly career-saving performance by an aging actor (Kurt Russell, here), and lots and lots of music that, outside of the decade in which it was produced, hasn't been heard outside of Quentin Tarantino's house until now. But I, for one, refuse to look a gift film in the mouth, and if QT couldn't avoid making another QT film, who are we to pass it up? And it's a good one, too-- the Grindhouse version moved at a fantastic clip, packing into 90 minutes two vastly different exploits of Russell's Stuntman Mike. The DVD version does this, too, but all it adds is more dialogue, making Tarantino's already-talky film talkier. It's the first time the dialogue in a Tarantino film adds excessive padding, instead of enhancing-- the double-feature version features a lot of verbiage, but every word is carefully placed, every conversation necessary to flesh out characters that we need to invest in to get the full effect of what inevitably happens to them.

It's also an extremely well-acted film, for the most part-- Sydney Poitier as Jungle Julia leaves a lot to be desired-- she sleepwalks a bit, i think-- and Rose McGowan overshadows herself by being better in Planet Terror, but a sultry Vanessa Ferlito and an adorably perky Jordan Ladd make the initial batch of girls worth watching. Of course, it's Russell's show from the beginning-- his dialogue is so well-placed and -worded that you'll begin to fall for Stuntman Mike yourself, freaky scar and all, and he's so frightening and charismatic that he immediately invades the upper echelon of movie villains. When there's a turning of the tables in the film's latter half (that introduces a new batch of girls, the most memorable of which is Tracie Thoms as Quentin's female Sam Jackson stand-in), Death Proof goes into giddy overdrive, and makes its mark in Tarantino's ouvre as certified classic.

I'd love to see Grindhouse immortalized one day the way the creators intended it-- but, failing that, the padded-out full-length versions of Planet Terror and Death Proof will have to do.

Grindhouse: ***** (out of five)
Planet Terror: ****
Death Proof: ***** (original); ****1/2 (extended)