Clerks
"I'm not even supposed to *be* here today!"

 

Clerks is, without a doubt, my all time favourite film. It centres around a working day in the life of Dante Hicks (left), a twenty-something New Jersey slacker whose life seems to mainly consist of playing hockey and working at the local convencience store. When his boss calls him in on his day off, Dante is plunged into the worst twelve-hour shift of his life, dealing with, amongst others, an anti-smoking riot caused by a rep for a chewing gum company, a corpse in the bathroom, his infuriatingly smug and rude friend Randall (who works in the video store next door), the local drug dealers Jay and Silent Bob, and his stupidly complex lovelife.

Clerks is a side-splittingly funny adult comedy full of snappy dialogue and hilarious incidents that range from the bizarre to the gross, but that's not the reason I love it. Beneath the apparently juvenile surface is a brilliant observation of a confused young man going nowhere fast and trying to understand his position in life and love whilst (in the words of Randall) 'doing what's basically a monkey's job!'.It is also a tribute to all those out there who have ever had to suffer through a lousy low-level job in the service industry and in this (according to my friend Ebeth) it succeeds hands down. This is mostly thanks to the director/scriptwriter's own lousy experiences - it was actually filmed at the store where he worked during the day, so filming took place at night, which is why the shutters are down.

The director and scriptwriter Kevin Smith (pictured left as Silent Bob) has since gone on to make the less-acclaimed 'Mallrats' (two guys hang out in a mall waiting for their girlfriends whilst chaos reigns around them), which I've not seen, and the more-acclaimed 'Chasing Amy' (guy falls for girl, girl turns out to be a lesbian, girl hangs with guy, girl falls for guy, girl turns out to have slept with oodles of men before (which actually makes her bisexual in my opinion), guy freaks out), which isn't as successful as Smith might hope about the insights into sexuality but does have more interesting glimpses into the way young heterosexual men's minds work (a subject on which I'm not too well versed otherwise). His latest film 'Dogma' is currently causing the Catholic Church some problems (so what doesn't?) and hasn't been released by its publisher Disney (yup, Disney! I guess even slackers sell out occasionally).

(Please note, all pictures displayed here are not mine are used without permission of their owners because I'm recommending that you go out and rent/see/buy a copy of this film, thus increasing their profits. However, should they disapprove, please can they mail me and I'll remove them.)

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[Clerks] [Bagdad Cafe] [The Usual Suspects] [The Hudsucker Proxy] [Casablanca] [The Frighteners] [Scream]
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