Here the storytelling, Smith's great strength, is 90 percent riff and 10 percent theme. Shouldn't the characters be more memorable than the punch lines?
Comment
07/20/06
Clerks II (2006)
62
%
Tomatometer
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Reviews Counted:155
Fresh:96
Rotten:59
Average Rating:6.1/10
Consensus: Clerks II dishes up much of the graphic humor and some of the insight that made the 1994 original a cult hit.
Theatrical Release:22-09-2006
Synopsis: Ten years ago best friends Dante Hicks (BRIAN O'HALLORAN) and Randal Graves (JEFF ANDERSON) were New Jersey mini-mall clerks still slacking off together in their early 20s. Now, Kevin Smith checks... [More]
Starring: Brian O'Halloran, Jeff Anderson, Rosario Dawson, Jason Mewes
Director: Kevin Smith
Reviews for Clerks II
Clerks II is more sentimental and ruder than its predecessor, though its brand of raunch tends to curdle halfway out of the characters' mouths.
07/20/06
The slackers of Clerks have lost their wiseass flannel-shirted charm in Kevin Smith's feeble attempt to translate his day-in-the-life-of '90s cult film to 2006.
07/20/06
Clerks II will find Kevin Smith’s detractors saying that the filmmaker simply regurgitates the past, while his loyal fan base will applaud his return to the tried and true.
07/20/06
Smith won’t win any new converts with Clerks II, but he’ll satisfy the devoted core audience.
07/20/06
It's easy to rag on Clerks II for all the same reasons critics bag all of Smith's movies, but it's impossible to deny the fun that Clerks II ultimately is.
07/20/06
Clerks II brings Smith back to his roots, and his strengths as a writer-director.
07/20/06
Another raunchily funny, mildly sad and brutally candid purging of [Smith's] demons and dreams.
07/20/06
With Smith, you have to take the crass with the inspired, but unlike Quentin Tarantino, Smith has something to say. Sometimes it's worth sitting through a ton of sick jokes to hear it. Clerks II is one of those times.
07/20/06
This movie put a broad smile on my face, virtually from the start.
07/20/06
Makes a surprisingly convincing case for Dante and Randal as characters worthy of a revisit once a decade.
07/20/06
I like trashy humor, but there is not much here to chuckle at.
07/20/06
Smith's commentary track for the new "Road House" DVD is riotous -- it's got more laughs than his past two films combined.
07/20/06
So is Clerks II as good as its predecessor? Not as good, but pretty doggoned close (or as Randal would say, pretty @%$#& close).
07/20/06
Despite not achieving the level of the original...this is the most amusing comedy to arrive in months.
07/20/06
When film theorists of the future take stock of Kevin Smith’s oeuvre, here’s hoping Clerks II is remembered as the worthless travesty that cemented the auteur’s irrelevancy.
07/20/06
Smith's hyperliterate lead-assed wiseacres deserve their place in indie-movie history, no doubt, but when even the fart jokes fail to pop, it may be time to draw the curtain.
07/19/06
Wickedly irreverent and bone-tickling funny.
07/19/06
Lacking the grubby authenticity of its predecessor, the movie feels clueless and out of touch. Sometimes you can't go home again.
07/18/06
Smith's heart is in it, but it's sort of a broken heart now; Clerks II feels as though it was made by a man who needs a change but isn't permitted to make one.
07/18/06
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