Clerks (1994) Review

 

Clerks (1994)

It’s the 1 year anniversary of this page, so what better way than to celebrate with my favorite film.
Clerks follows Dante and Randal, two clerks at an uneventful convenience store, where things go from bad to worse for Dante on his day off.

It’s hard to put into words how much this film means to me, but it speaks to the growing, adolescent side that started in college and has evolved as I’ve hit adulthood. And much like me, I share that with the witty, often raunchy, and unmotivated duo of characters who run the Quick Stop. They’re at a dead-end job, dealing with rude customers, and handling the drama that plagues their boring lives. It’s always been a movie about the lost and wayward generation of young people who have nowhere to be and nowhere to go, but yet they’re here. It’s expertly done and written, feeling like many a conversation I’ve had with my own nerdy, often punk ass friends. The dialogue is real and relatable, capturing the tone and mindset of these young guys and the everyday struggles they deal with, especially in a store full of oddballs and weirdos. While being extremely relatable in that sense, it’s also easily one of the funniest and most quotable movies I know, featuring classic lines that I often say in my own daily life.

For a group of no-name actors with little acting experience, it’s so perfectly acted, including memorable performances from Lisa Spoonauer, Marilyn Ghigliotti, Jason Mewes, and Kevin Smith, as well as Brian O’Halloran and Jeff Anderson. O’Halloran and Anderson are very obviously the stars here, each complementing each others performances so naturally. O’Halloran is the good guy with a victim mentality who is often serious and always playing his hand with the ladies in his life. Anderson however, is a scene stealer and a bad influence on Dante, with his existential musings on life and work.

Directed by Kevin Smith on a budget acquired from selling his comics & maxing out his credit cards, Clerks is an endlessly funny cult classic that will always be relevant in the lives of budding adults with its profane, nerdy, and prosaic look at the prosaic lives of everyday people at their dead end jobs.

10/10