"Clerks II" And "An Evening With Kevin Smith"

Like Kyle mentioned in yesterday's comments, "Clerks II" is cruder than "Clerks": crude to the point where it stops being funny and starts just being tedious. It makes you wonder about discretion. Maybe these guys are just spoiled by success. Maybe the demographic for this kind of humor is huge. Whatever. A little subtlety would be appreciated.

Like, cut the donkey scene, for chrissakes.

Some aspects of "Clerks II" seem OK - better acting, some tugging of heartstrings, although the writing is a little less crisp than with "Clerks".

I did like that they had Rosario Dawson in the movie, and even gave her a little dance sequence, to the Jackson Five's "ABC". Great! That's just what I like (which is why it seemed so strange to see it here). I couldn't help but wonder, though, what is she doing in a movie like this? There's a million other places where her talents would be on better display. I guess now that Kevin Smith is a big success, he can now pull in big names into his vortex of mediocrity - the privilege of success, after all.

I was baffled, in "An Evening With Kevin Smith", by how many fawning university students showed up for his talks. Every single person in those auditoriums would seem to have more on-the-ball than the marble-mouthed yo-yo at the podium - something of a failed clerk, after all. So why is it that it's the marble-mouthed yo-yo talking?

I will never understand the roots of success, and the roots of failure. Perhaps they are so-closely aligned as to be opposite sides of the the same card.