‘Clerks 2′ Delights Cannes

Saturday, May 27, 2006
By Roger Friedman

Bestiality Film: 8 Minute Cannes Ovation

Maybe you remember Clerks, the hilarious indie film that put director Kevin Smith on the map more than a decade ago. Since then, he’s brought us some good ones (”Chasing Amy”), some that are controversial (”Dogma”), and some that are only for the faithful (”Jersey Girl,” “Jay and Silent Bob”).

Last night Smith returned to form in a post-midnight premiere of “Clerks 2,” the long awaited sequel that reunites the still unknown stars of the first film and adds the delightful Rosario Dawson to the mix. The result was a huge eight minute standing ovation in the Claude DeBussy Theater in the Palais at 2 am Saturday.

And this was despite the fact that the film – hilarious, moving and shocking – is simultaneously a meditation on friendship, aging, and bestiality. Yes, you read that correctly. Much is made of a well dressed donkey that is forced into interspecies commingling with its owner as part of an after hours going away party in a fast food restaurant called Mooby’s. The movie has an R rating, and the donkey may be featured in a For Your Consideration ad in Variety next winter.

Besides the donkey, Clerks 2 also features extended cameos by Jason Lee and Wanda Sykes, a walk on from Ben Affleck, and of course Smith himself as his long running character Silent Bob with partner Jason Mewes as Jay. The clerks of the title are still played by Smith’s longtime pals Jeff Anderson as Randall and Brian O’Halloran as Dante; Smith’s real life wife, Jennifer, is featured as Dante’s clueless fiancée Emma.

This is good news for The Weinstein Company, which will have a huge summer hit Smith is one of their franchise players, coming from the original—real—Miramax.

The premise of Clerks 2 is pretty simple. The Quick Stop where Randall and Dante have been clerks since we last saw them in 1994 burns down, and the pair—now in their 30s—move over to Mooby’s where Dante has had a one night stand on the prep table with the manager (Dawson). Before finding out that she’s pregnant, Dante makes plans to move away with Emma. Silent Bob and Jay move their dope peddling from the Quick Stop to Mooby’s as well, and Randall plans the Donkey Show for Dante. It’s that simple, and no, it’s no Da Vinci Code, that’s for sure.

But fans of Smith—who are legion—as well as teens in general and the college crowd, are going to adore Clerks 2, which was originally titled “The Passion of the Clerks.” In the middle of all this nuttiness, and Animal House inspired moments (the poor donkey is certainly the cinematic descendant of the dead horse in the dean’s office), Smith has crafted a nifty little tale of friends who love each other—as they say over and over, not in the gay way—but realize their extended adolescence must finally come to an end.

What’s really amazing about Clerks 2 is that it works at all. The first Clerks was a cult hit, and unlike with say John Sayles’s “The Return of the Secaucus Seven,” the actors never went on to anything other than recurring in Smith’s world. To find them not only picking up where they left off, but also making the whole thing work again, is quite an achievement. A lot of it has to do with Dawson, who is so natural, appealing, and evolved as Becky that she pulls the whole enterprise together.

Special mention, by the way, has to go to Jason Mewes. Unlike his cohorts, he’s managed to get some other roles in the recent past in some great unseen B or C movies that are either already on DVD or simply can’t be sold. In Bottom’s Up, his biggest one, he co-stars with our friend Paris Hilton, whose own “House of Wax” and “Pledge This” would have benefited from having a donkey as well.