Well, I guess Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back wasn’t the last View Askew picture after all.  Smith returns to the characters that began his career and launched him as a independent film golden boy / lewd Star Wars obsessed fan.  What can I say about Clerks II?  Well, at least for this film, Kevin Smith is back!

Clerks II
Custom Rating

Kevin Smith seems intent on recapturing the spirit of the original Clerks with this sequel.  It’s a dirty little film that will make you laugh your ass off.  The film succeeds in most aspects, though at times Smith seems over ambitious to push through jokes, that if he had a little more patience and trust in the material, he’d understand it’s not necessary to try so hard for every laugh.  Even with such issues, the most surprising thing about Clerks II is how its heart seems to always be in the right place (even during a donkey show).

The film begins with the fiery destruction of The Quick Stop and then jumps ahead in time to find Dante (Brian O’Halloran) and Randal (Jeff Anderson) working at the fast food franchise Mooby’s.  Things haven’t changed much for Randal who continues to do as little work as possible while spouting off his unique philosophy.  He also likes to torture his co-worker Elias (Trevor Fehrman), a sheltered and more than a little naive teenager who loves nothing more than Transformers and The Lord of the Rings.

Dante meanwhile has a fiance (Jennifer Scwalbach Smith) and plans on moving down to Florida.  His life seems to be taking shape, but there are a few complications.  As much as he seems ready to leave New Jersey behind, he has to address his feelings for his boss Becky (Rosario Dawson) and the end of his life long friendship with Randal.

Kevin Smith’s latest flick is lewd, disgusting, and very funny.  It’s also a very personal and emotional film about friendship and love. 

The film examines how people change over time, but how they also stay the same.  It won’t be easy for some people to make it through the amount of crude humor that happens over the course of the film, but if you can, the point of the film is rather sweet.

The make-up of the film, much like Clerks, involves debate on pop culture (including a terrific scene about Star Wars versus tLOR), sex (including a donkey show, the prospect of ass-to-mouth, and the discussion of a troll named Pillow Pants), and the use of language (including a laugh out loud scene with Wanda Sykes about a racial slur).

The only problem with the film is Smith seems to be trying a bit too hard at times to get the joke across.  The lead up to the donkey show works so well (as does the politically correct term used to describe it which reminded me strongly of a George Carlin joke about how political correctness can distort language to the point where anything is acceptable).  But we don’t need to actually see the donkey show on film, we already got the joke.  There are a couple places where the script literally beats a joke to death in this manner.

Many of Smith’s old friends show up in cameo appearances including Jason Lee, Ben Affleck, Ethan Suplee, Walt Flanagan, and of course Smith and Jason Mewes return as Jay and Silent Bob, who after the destruction of The Quick Stop, tag along to Mooby’s as well.

I’m glad to see Smith re-embrace his early style of film making and return to crafting films that will make you laugh, feel a little ashamed, but also make you think about relationships and life.  O’Halloran and Anderson seem to fit so naturally into these roles, Jason Mewes has come a long way since the first film, and the newcomers added seem to understand Smith’s style and fit seemlessly as new additoins to the View Askew Universe.  It’s Rosario Dawson who steals the film, and is fast becoming one of my favorite actresses working today.  She’s one to keep your eye on.

Clerks II is not the indie revolution that the original Clerks was, but it is something that it’s predecessor wasn’t: an all-around well put together movie.  Sure, Clerks was refreshing and often funny, but the message it was trying to send was a bit to literal and at the same time not entirely established.  Clerks II, on the other hand, shows a clear progression of Kevin Smith—it’s funnier, more touching and most important of all, tops necrophilia with bestiality.  What’s not to love?

Clerks II
Custom Rating

Raunchy comedies are a curse upon this house of mankind.  Sometimes we’ll get a The 40-Year-Old Virgin, but more often than not we’ll get efforts such as Happy Madison’s Grandma’s Boy.  Fortunately for us, Clerks II is one of the former, a comedy with just as many jabs at sex and dorks as there are serious moments that give us more detailed characters.

Clerks II takes up the story where it ended twelve years ago: Dante (Brian O’Halloran) and Randal (Jeff Anderson) are best friends stuck together in dead-end jobs neither wants, trying their half-assed best to do what they can with life.  The only changes are their employer (a fast food chain called “Mooby’s” that View Askew fans will remember from Dogma and Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back) and a couple of supporting characters played by Rosario Dawson and Trevor Fehrman.

But matters soon get dramatic as we find that Dante’s not only engaged, he’s moving away to Florida and unintentionally abandoning his best friend Randal.  And it doesn’t help that Dante’s getting a case of the jitters involving his soon-to-be-betrothed.

It’s easy to expect a Kevin Smith movie to make the inner 12-year-old laugh, and in that respect Clerks II makes the grade.  The film brings back racial slurs, furthers pee pee jokes and does something with a donkey that . . . well it does something with a donkey.

But what makes Clerks II such an accomplishment is Smith’s ability to weave this fondness for toilet humor and serious character development into one film.  Smith gives Anderson’s character a serious chunk of a problem to have to face, a problem not only that Anderson tackles with ease, but it’s also something you don’t see too often in films.  We see plenty of tween girl movies about BFFs getting into hard places, but what happens when a grown man has to cut the jokes and tell a friend what he means to the other?

Smith’s Chasing Amy was able to take a look at relationships with insight and intelligence, and probably had more to say that does Clerks II.  But then again, Chasing Amy doesn’t have an epic face-off between Star Wars and Lord of the Rings fanboys that ends in an involuntary bodily function; it’s not half so entertaining as this sixth entry into the View Askwniverse.

If there were a few explosions thrown into the mix, Clerks II might have been the perfect guy movie.  It’ll make you laugh and at the same time make you think about the rarely exploited best friend relationship dynamic.  Just don’t take anyone who doesn’t appreciate a good ol’ fashioned offensive joke, or two, or 47; it might end with an involuntary bodily function.

The world loves the idea of hating M. Night Shyamalan.  After not being able to cater to the impossibly high expectations of The Village, movie-goers pounced on him, eager to sound sophisticated enough to say that the guy who revolutionized the twist ending was a talentless has-been.  Truth be told, The Village wasn’t great but wasn’t awful either; and anyone who gets the point Lady in the Water will have to jump off the bandwagon.

Lady in the Water
4 Stars

Twist endings, who doesn’t love them?  The only time we like to be deceived is in a movie theater, and hands down nobody does it better today than M. Night Shyamalan.  He so skillfully buries the true endings into the first two acts of his films that it can fully justify the price of admission.  Hell, Signs could have been nothing but Mel Gibson dancing around in a pink fluffy tutu while reciting “The Communist Manifesto” in a Greek accent for the first 100 minutes, and the ending would have still made it a great movie.

But Shyamalan has been the master of the surprise ending for four films now, and it’s become so expected of him that it’s not much of a surprise anymore.  The time came for good ol’ M. to retire the twist ending, to stop making films with more 180s than Tony Hawk gets in a half-pipe.  And he did – Lady in the Water is twistless, but the writer/director/producer/actor/whatever else you can think of proves with the film that he’s no one-trick pony; he can make a good no matter the ending

Paul Giamatti stars as the Super at an apartment complex haunted by smokers, sisters, film critics and a bleached skin Bryce Dallas Howard from some other dimension.  Howard’s character, Story, is from the ‘Blue World’ and has come to Philadelphia to muse a writer.  Everything’s fine, dandy and sort of magical until a wolf tries to eat her.

And that’s pretty much all there is to the story.  No, Shyamalan didn’t waste too much time investing development (and what development he does instill feels somewhat superfluous,) but the point isn’t a thick script—it’s the concept.  Shyamalan didn’t take on this Lady in hopes of giving us characters to fall in love with.  He wasn’t trying to dazzle us with story elements and he wasn’t trying to pull a twist on us in the final five minutes.

No, Shyamalan was going for the exact opposite effect.  Lady is nothing but a simple story, or to use the now defunct subtitle of the movie, it’s “A Bedtime Story.”  It’s a modern day fairy tale, not meant to thrill us but instead to celebrate the simple story. 

He even throws in a film critic some will claim to be Shyamalan’s way of poking back for all of The Village‘s negative reviews, but is really just a device to put it in bold writing for the viewer that this is nothing more than a simple, point A to point B story that has been installed into stories for as long as they’ve existed.  Hell, he goes so far as to name a character ‘Story,’ how much more obvious do you have to get?

It’s a refreshing take after Shyamalan’s previous four films.  Instead of trying to wow us, he uses his ability as an above-the-cut director to tell the same story a grade-schooler could tell.  Shyamalan may be too reserved of a director to truly wow his audience, but he still creates visuals and moods that set the story clear as stone.

He silps a bit in the final minutes by adding a bit too much humor than is appropriate, but the overall tone of the film is a gorgeous one, one that makes this critic anxious to see what different stories he’ll pursue in the future.

Don’t expect Lady in the Water to live up to the Shyamalan pedigree of a thriller that’s been so widely connected to this film in its commercials and posters, but if you go in looking for a nothing but a good movie, you’ll find an elegant summer treat.

Sometimes you go into a film dreading the worst and are pleasantly surprised by the result.  I thoroughly enjoyed myself throughout Ivan Reitman’s new super-hero/comic extravaganza – My Super Ex-Girlfriend.  In a year with V for Vendetta, X-Men: The Last Stand, and Superman Returns who would have thought that this would be the best comic book movie of the year?

My Super Ex-Girlfriend
Custom Rating

Ivan Reitman‘s recent directoral record has been rocky – he hasn’t directed a really good film since the year I graduated from high school (1993’s Dave).  But here, despite all reason, he delivers the goods.  He gets the super-hero model right along with understanding how constantly saving people might play on a person’s mind and nerves, creating humorous results.  And it remembers to bring the FUN of super-powers – something Superman Returns sorely lacked through must of it’s two and a half hour running time.

Matt Sanders (Luke Wilson) is your average film nice guy.  He works hard, is compassionate and smart, has a crush on a female co-worker, Hannah (Anna Faris), who is involved with an underwear model.  He also has a lecherous womanizing best friend (Rainn Wilson).  His life is rather ordinary, but all of that changes when he meets Jenny Jones (Uma Thurman).

Jenny seems a little needy and a couple of marbles short of a full bag, but she’s nice and the two get along.  As the relationship deepens Matt finds her odd behavior scary until he learns her secret – Jenny is actually the super-hero G-Girl!  With the truth in the open things get back to normal until Jenny’s neurotic jealousy and her evil arch-nemisis Professor Bedlam (Eddie Izzard) both start disrupting Matt’s world.

When Matt breaks up with Jenny he finds that a scorned super-woman is even worse than the regular kind.  What will Matt do?  Will he make peace with Jenny?  Will he take Bedlam up on his offer to get rid of G-Girl?  Will he ever admit his feelings to Hannah?

The film has a comic undertone that works so well I was grinning from ear-to-ear for most of the film.  It’s cheesy, corny, and fun, but it takes the characters seriously and that makes all the difference.  Thurman is a little whiny in her performance (but nowhere near as bad as the trailers suggest), but with that we get exploration of the reasons behind her behavior and one pretty darned good origin story that Stan Lee himself would be proud of!

Even the small parts have nice comic touches such as Wanda Sykes playing Matt’s boss or Margaret Anne Florence as the recurring role of the sexy barmaid who has caught Vaughn’s eye.  And Anna Faris is just terrific here as she breaks out of those dumb blonde roles she seems forever mired in and and plays a character with some brains and heart.

All that and some super-cool fight sequences on the streets of New York which will make fans of Supeman II giggle with joy.

So far this is easily the best comic book move of the year.  After dealing with the mixture of good and bad in Superman Returns and V for Vendetta (and the utter disaster of X-Men: The Last Stand) it’s nice to simply enjoy a super-hero flick.  What a great surprise to find in the middle of this rather lackluster summer!