Reuters/AP: “Review: Smith rings up pleasing sequel with Clerks II” (**SPOILERS**)

“…Smith has grown more skilled in shooting and editing his films. Despite a mostly one-set location, “Clerks II” feels anything but static as characters and story flow easily in and around the restaurant and its suburban environment.”

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MTV: “Has Kevin Smith Mellowed? Clerks II Will Tell.” (**SPOILERS**)

“…Let me tell you something,” Smith retorted. “I was born on a Friday, but it wasn’t last Friday. Rosario has had that chest for a long time now. I can’t imagine that she gets there and she’s like, ‘I had no idea that if I jumped, they would jump as well! I remember shooting that scene,” he continued, attempting to set the record straight. “She was looking at playback on the rooftop, and she was like, ‘The girls are movin’!’ They are hers, right? I mean, we’re supposed to believe they’ve never moved before?”

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Film Blather: “Review: Clerks II” (**SPOILERS**)

“…Part of the reason the humor works so often and so well is that the characters work: we really believe, for one thing, that these are the people from Clerks some twelve years after the events of that film, working at a fast-food joint instead of a convenience store and a video store.”

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Orange County Register: “Kevin Smith: Back to Jersey”

“… It doesn’t get any more real than seeing two dudes who have aged 12 years. You can’t hide the age. You can’t hide the paunch. These dudes are old. But there’s something nice about a warts-and-all look at aging like that. And I thought it would be fascinating to look at the angry young man when he hits his mid 30s.”

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WIBC: “Clerks II – Plus The Wikel Boys’ Interview With Stars Brian O’Halloran and Jeff Anderson”

“…It doesn’t get any more real than seeing two dudes who have aged 12 years. You can’t hide the age. You can’t hide the paunch. These dudes are old. But there’s something nice about a warts-and-all look at aging like that. And I thought it would be fascinating to look at the angry young man when he hits his mid 30s.”

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Ain’t It Cool News: “Capone Relishes The Romance And “Vomit Inducing Acts” Of CLERKS II” (**SPOILERS**)

“…Clerks II is loaded with equal parts charm and rude (but damn funny) antics. Perhaps for the first time in his career, Smith has given us something for everyone, without going too much in any direction. The film manages to give us romance and vomit-inducing acts, sometimes simultaneously.”

The San-Diego Union-Tribune – “Average Hero” (** SPOILERS **)

“…Smith said there isn’t anyone for whom he’d stand in line. Then, reconsidering: “I’d line up for Jesus,” he said, “for an hour. Well, it’s Jesus, maybe an hour and a half.”

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Coming Soon – “Clerks II: A Return to the Counter Culture” (** SPOILERS **)

“…Chicks I think will totally dig it,” insists Rosario Dawson, who claims that taking her to see this movie on a date would be a tremendous idea (if she were single). By the end of the night, “I would be like, ‘I’m yours!’”

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Page Six – “Shelf Restocked” (** SPOILERS **)

“…It’s far more accomplished than anything I’ve done before,” Smith says. “It brings to bear all the things – the wisdom, experience and knowledge that we got in making six movies. It all folded into one flick, and it really represents the best I could be as a filmmaker.”

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Pulse – “Clerks II: An interview with Kevin Smith”

“…You laugh your ass off with the movie,” he said. “But then it goes into this really emotional place about the kind of heterosexual same-sex marriages that guy best friends are in that are really just one step shy from being actual flat-out gay relationships.”

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Suite 101 – “Trevor Fehrman on Clerks II”

“…People ask me how do you come up with roles,” Fehrman said. “For me, I guess they expect it to be some like DeNiro-esque or Johnny Depp like they really think about it right out of the whole Stanislavski form, whatever that is. I’m not that complicated a guy. So how I came up with this character, all I can say is a couple of the mannerisms came from a couple people I know. It’s sort of a cross between my friend Paul from Long Beach who’s like the best guy in the world, but people always think that I’m describing him as stupid. He’s not stupid. He’s smart.”

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Suite 101 – ” Jason Mewes on Clerks II”

“…Now with a shortly cropped do, Jason Mewes’ follicles must grow pretty quickly because he was able to use his real hair for Jay in Clerks II. “When Kevin said we’re going to shoot, I started letting it grow again. It wasn’t this short. It was a little longer than this, but I started letting it grow and didn’t cut it until we shot. And then when we were done, I cut it off again; but that’s my real hair.”

If you’re a fan of Clerks, the convenience-store slacker comedy made for $27,000 that, in 1994, established Kevin Smith as the who-needs-a-budget-when-you’ve-got-attitude? auteur of his generation, then you’ll probably want to see Clerks II. Yet it’s precisely devotees of the Smith universe (porn jokes, cruddy camera angles, surprise flights of grunge eloquence, more porn jokes) who have a right to be wary of a Clerks sequel. Can Smith, after finding fame and fortune beyond the mini-mall parking lots of New Jersey, now successfully revive the talky, dead-zone limbo of postadolescent wage slaves whose lives are going nowhere? Can he recapture the store-as-movie-set authenticity of the original film? How about its innocently sacrilegious horndog wit?

The answer, of course, is that Kevin Smith can recapture all of this — or, at least, enough of it to make Clerks II an agreeable mischievous romp instead of a rip-off — because he never truly abandoned it in the first place. Clerks II, unlike Clerks, has been shot in color and given the semblance of a plot — will Dante Hicks grow up into a responsible citizen? — but really, the movie, like Clerks, is a low-budget excuse for talk: dirty talk, dorky talk, obsessive pop-culture talk (which is better, The Lord of the Rings or Star Wars?), great gushing geysers of talk, much of it prickly and obscene and hilarious and, in that Kevin Smith way, so smart about being stupid that the characters’ verbosity becomes, in every sense, their saving grace.

In Clerks II, the Quick Stop has been closed down due to a fire. Dante (Brian O’Halloran), the neurotically rational, wheel-spinning underachiever who looks like Charlie Sheen after being whacked with a geek stick, and Randal (Jeff Anderson), that spiky, even less evolved specimen of dedicated…uh, randiness, now work the counter of a Mooby’s fast-food franchise. They wear goofy purple uniforms that, if possible, mock their status even more than the Godot-at-the-Ring Dings-rack atmosphere of the convenience store did. Slinging burgers and onion rings to the rare customer who wanders into the place, they jabber, in their nothing-matters/everything-matters way, about such vital topics as Transformers, the Proustian joy of go-carts, the issue of whether two particular body parts should ever meet during sex, and also whether either of these two human zeds plans to get, you know, a future.

Dante, at least, wants one. At 33, he has a tawny, domineering fiancée (Jennifer Schwalbach), and he’s planning to go with her to Florida, where he’s to spend his life running a car wash. The complicating factor is Dante’s boss, played by Rosario Dawson — convincing as a rival love interest, though not necessarily as the manager of a Mooby’s. The romantic plot is standard-issue, but the real love story — the one between Dante and Randal — is brought to a satisfying, even touching, conclusion. And I haven’t even mentioned the donkey sex, or the way Jay (Jason Mewes), with boom-box backup from Silent Bob (Smith), massages his nips as he replays the killer’s dance from The Silence of the Lambs. Talk about touching.

San Bernadino Sun: “Jason Mewes Doing It Clean And Sober”

“…The big difference this time was I was waking up early and looking forward to working. And I’d hang out after.”

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CanMag: “Smith on Clerks II”

“…Jason Lee, we got lucky because Jason was able to make time in his very busy Earl schedule for that scene and that was something that originally Matt [Damon] was going to do, but then Matt was off shooting a Robert DeNiro movie and so Jason stepped in and thankfully pulled it off.”

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E! Online: “Kevin Smith on Clerks II” (**SPOILERS**)

What do you think about being the screenwriter for Aquaman 2 on Entourage?

“I think they owe me a part now. They’ve taken two shots at me–one last season, one this season. Now, I think I should show up on the actual f–kin’ show and slap Ari Gold.”

MSNBC – “Clerks II will more than satisfy Smith fans” (**CONTAINS SPOILERS**)

“…You’ll be shocked to learn that Dante and Randal are still doing the exact same thing: standing around all day at their menial jobs, finding ways to avoid work, and talking. And talking and talking. They’re just doing it in color instead of black and white”.

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Comic Book Resources – “Interview: Kevin Smith”

What was the genesis for the creation of this sequel?

I don’t! [laughs] I don’t know. I could point to any number of things. I really wanted to tell a story about what I thought it felt like it was like to be in my 30s. I tried to do that with “Jersey Girl,” and I think to some degree I think I was kind of successful in what I wanted to do, but at the same time it’s a movie that’s a bit manipulative and a bit mawkish and what not. So, I wanted to do a version of what I felt what it was like being in my 30s that was a little more in touch with reality, which is odd because this movie does have a donkey show at its epicenter. [laughs] So, that’s part of it and I thought that “Clerks” was a movie about what I felt it was like to be in my 20s, so I could use Dante and Randal as the way in and suddenly it became “Clerks II.”

I talked about doing the movie back in ‘98. In the tail end of the “Dogma” credits it says, “Jay & Silent Bob will return in ‘Clerks II: Hardly Clerking.’” Then I was like, “You know what man? Maybe I shouldn’t fuck with the sacred cow. Do a sequel to the first film? What if it sucks and people retroactively go back and hate on the first film. Perhaps it’s not the way to go.” And it became “Jay & Silent Bob Strike Back” instead. But all the ideas were there. The groundwork had been laid in my head, so that Dante and Randal story was always in the background. I figured one day I’d just do it in comic book form or something like that. Then, when I thought about telling the story, about what it’s like to be in my 30s, I was like, “Shit, that’s the story. It’s all coming together. It’s gelling.”

Some people online have said it’s obviously a reaction to “Jersey Girl,” the film didn’t do well and he went back to the well and he’s retrenching. They’ve missed the target, but hit the tree. “Jersey Girl” played a role, but it wasn’t that because I was already dialed into doing “Clerks II” while we were still working on “Jersey Girl.” While working on “Jersey Girl” I was just like, “Man, next movie I don’t want to work with famous people. I don’t want to work with celebrities. I want to work with unknowns. I don’t want to fucking worry about ‘In Touch Weekly’ or ‘Us Weekly’ putting them on their cover every fucking week.” It’s weird when you spend like two years of your life trying to put together and tell a story and then when you sit down to talk about it nobody wants to talk about the story, they just want to ask, “Did you see the pink diamond? Is it huge?” And I’m like, “Well, yeah, but what does that have to do with anything, man?” When the back story overshadows the story, it’s just not cool anymore. As a storyteller it’s kind of insulting. Either the movie is as bad as you say and you have nothing to talk about except these two, or you find these two more fascinating than the movie we put together. Either way you’re kind of screwed.

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Canmag – “Clerks II Racism” (**CONTAINS SPOILERS**)

“…That didn’t make it any easier for Jeff Anderson to perform the scene. “The weird thing, it’s like you’re going through the script and you’re reading the script, and you’re trying to memorize your dialogue,” said Anderson. “It’s like when you’re in the moment you have to get into that scene, your brain is telling you the whole time, ‘No, no, no, no, you don’t say this,’ but it is what it is.”

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About.com – “Trevor Fehrman Talks About Clerks II”

“…How I came up with this character… all I can say is a couple of the mannerisms came from a couple people I know. It’s sort of a cross between my friend Paul from Long Beach who’s like the best guy in the world, but people always think that I’m describing him as stupid. He’s not stupid. He’s smart. He’s an amazing drummer. He’s just one of those guys who’s very single-minded. He completely thinks something through before he moves onto the next thing. He does stuff in order. So whenever you explain something to Paul, he does this look where he goes like, ‘Oh, yeah. Oh yeah, I got you dawg.” So there’s a little bit of that in Elias, where he’s trying to wrap his mind around something.”

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WHIOTV – “Kevin Smith Counters Bennifer Disaster With ‘Clerks II’”

“…Fans of the iconic character of Jay will be buzzing over Mewes’ dizzying performance in “Clerks II.” Because of the actor’s burning intensity, Jay is funny — and scary — at the same time.

“There’s an edge to the dude and I think that’s what makes him funny. The fact is, you never know where’s he’s going to go with something,” Smith said.”

Yahoo/Reuters – “Directors tell Gen X’ers to grow up”

“For years, Smith vowed not to make a sequel to the first film, and he denies “Clerks II” is merely an attempt to cash in on the notoriety of its predecessor. “Clerks” was a hit on video and spawned a comic book and an animated TV series.

“If I was going to try to make money, I would have made (big-budget movie) ‘The Green Hornet.’ I would have made, like, $5 million just to direct,” Smith said. “‘Clerks” (II) whole budget was 5 million bucks,” Smith said.”

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MSN/AP – “‘Clerks’ returns, with hints of growing up”

“…I was just like, that’s a sacred cow, and I shouldn’t really mess with the first movie,” Smith said. “It’s the one that put me on the map. What if your sequel sucks, and then people retroactively go back and hate the first one, and you lose all that good will?”

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Yahoo/AP – “Clerks II: Something To Offend Everyone”

“…There’s something in this to offend everyone,” said Rosario Dawson, who co-stars as the Mooby’s manager. “So many movies that are made now are so safe. They’re trying to get as broad of an audience as possible, and the product is so watered down it’s just an insult to the intelligence of most audiences. That’s not at all what Kevin does.

“Clerks II” features cameos from Smith regulars Ben Affleck and Jason Lee, plus the return of drug dealers Jay (Jason Mewes) and Silent Bob (Smith), though they’re no longer users themselves, a nod to party-hearty Mewes staying sober for the last three years.

“I think people relate to Jay and Silent Bob, dudes just sitting around smoking weed and being obnoxious,” said Mewes. “A lot of people tell me, `I have a friend just like that.’”

For all its vulgarity, “Clerks II” has a sweet sensibility and ultimately takes Dante and Randal to a place that should please fans of the original flick — and could leave them counting on “Clerks III.”

Smith said he would not rule that out, and he hopes to do a straight-to-video animated “Clerks” movie. But a third live-action film would be a tough sell for Anderson, who only agreed to do “Clerks II” after a lot of arm-twisting.

“If Kevin thought he had a hard time convincing me to do number two, he’s in for a real battle to do number three,” said Anderson, who initially thought the sequel was a bad idea but signed on because he liked the script. “This one’s a very nice bookend to `Clerks,’ and I think the ending is really poignant.”

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NorthJersey.com – “Fanboys Run The Show”

“…And what of Kevin Smith — who has written comic books, named his daughter Harley Quinn after a DC comics character, and opened his own comic store (Jay and Silent Bob’s Secret Stash) in Red Bank? Need you ask?

“My generation, we sat around talking about sex, and we talked about pop culture,” Smith says.

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Alexandia Times – “The Passion of Kevin Smith”

“…The end result, as far as Smith is concerned, is his best movie to date. “I do, I think it is [my best movie] I’m sure a lot of people disagree … I love it, though. It speaks to me … I am in that place in my life. I know exactly how Randal feels. I’m dialed in on it.”

And he hopes the fans will see his passion for the film and dial in, too. Smith, who has actively pursued interactions with the fans since he first jumped onto the Internet in 1995, realizes many see the first as a “seminal Indie film,” but knows that “Clerks II” is consistent with what the fans love best: two dudes sitting around talking for ninety minutes. “I love the fan base more than I love my own child,” said Smith. “I love my kid, but without those people I don’t have a job.” And to help get current fans, and prospective new ones, even more excited about the film, Smith is pioneering a new idea – a theatrical release commentary.

One week after “Clerks II” opens, Smith will release for download through iTunes, and eventually his own website, a director’s commentary for the film; thereby allowing fans the opportunity for an enriched second theatrical viewing.”

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NJ.Com – “Directors tell Gen X’ers to grow up”

“…Smith, a former Quick Stop clerk and Monmouth County postal employee, has come a long way since, with a résumé of six more idiosyncratic films reflecting his elevation of the very common man and his decidedly potty- mouth way of expressing things.

“Clerks II” is the latest. It opens nationwide Friday.

“I wanted to write about being in my 30s,” the 35-year-old director explains during a Philadelphia visit. “I wanted to create new characters and have Dante and Randal (the clerks in the original movie) go to town.”

Comic Book Resources – “Interview: Rosario Dawson”

How did you first become aware of “Clerks II?”

I guess they had come up with a list of girls to go out to and Kevin liked the idea of me a lot and thought it was a long shot to ask, which I think is crazy because I’ve always wanted to work with him. So, my manager and my agent had to go to the office to read the script. It was very hush, hush thing – no one could get the script out because they were afraid of leaks. They laughed their asses off and so they sent a messenger over to drop it off at my place, who was like, “I’ll be back in three hours.” So, I had to speed read it as I was getting ready to do a play in New York! I read it the first time through and thought it was absolutely hilarious. Kevin had me at the (SPOILER)! [laughs] I wasn’t the girl with the (SPOILER) – which I thought would be a little weird with my Dad – and I didn’t have to participate in (SPOILER), I just had to watch which wasn’t that bad! [laughs] So, no fear of retribution! Totally legal! [Zak Charles Knutson, who (SPOILER)] is actually the nicest guy on the planet – he really went for it. I was like, that’s some acting. If you’re going to be that guy, be that guy.” I had such a great time. I got so excited when I read it.

The movie does allude to certain things from the first film and it has those homage moments – I’m excited to be a part of some of those homage moments like the roof scene, the toe nail painting and all that kind of stuff – but you don’t need to watch the first movie to get it. And the first movie still stands on its own, it’s still a really great film, but when you watch it next to this movie you see how much Kevin’s grown as a film maker and a writer. It’s wonderful to be going out, talking to the press and seeing people who really liked this movie and reacting like, “I really liked it! I was really offended sometimes, but it’s a good film!” And yes, it is, it’s a good film. At the heart of it it’s about friendship and whether or not to go after the brass ring of success and what will make me look like I’m happy, or do I go after what will actually make me happy, even though it may not be as glamorous. And I’m the girl he settles for! It was a really interesting project for that reason. This movie reveals the fact that, deep down, Kevin’s really a sweet heart.

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Comic Book Resources – “Interview: Jason Mewes”

Jason, did you have any apprehension about doing a sequel?

Not at all. I didn’t really think about it. People keep asking me that. My thinking is we’re doing another movie and it’ll be fun. I love working with Kevin and everyone we work with. It’s a lot of fun for me. People have said, “Why would you do that? It won’t live up to the first!” But I don’t really think much about that shit. For Kevin, I do. I don’t want people to bash it and say, “It didn’t live up to the first” and all that shit because I know it would hurt his feelings and that’s what I think about more. For me, I’m like, “Let’s do ‘Clerks’ 3 and 4 and ‘Dogma’ 7.” [laughs] I love working with Kevin and I like playing different characters. Maybe he’ll [direct] a Ted Bundy movie or something similar to that and he can write me a character like that. I really enjoy working with Kevin.

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About.Com – “Interview: Kevin Smith”

“…In the first one I was more Dante wishing that I was Randal. This time around I’m definitely more Randal than Dante, which is odd because Dante is the one kind of going through ‘I’m having a baby and I’m getting married’ type thing, but I’m definitely more in the Randal headspace in terms of like I don’t want things to change. I’m a guy and so naturally change comes very hard to me. It’s a weird struggle all the time where it’s like how much can you remain the person that you were and still grow at the same time? I look at this movie and I definitely identify with Randal so much.”

“…I like to include everyone I know in the movie. I still love what I do. It’s a career now and I’m kind of used to it, but there is still a part of me that’s just like, ‘I can’t f**king believe that this is my job. This is awesome.’ I keep expecting that day where I wake up and I’m like, ‘I knew it was all a f**king dream. I knew that I was still f**king working at the Quick Stop.’ Because it’s that, because I still have that feeling there’s always a feeling that this is the last one that you’re going to get do. Something is going to happen and they’re going to pull rug out from under you so I like to put as many people as I know in the flick because each flick is kind of a snapshot of what’s going on in my life at the time that I wrote it. The people in the flick then are the people involved in my life at the same time. I like to pack it with my friends in the background or in the foreground and stuff like that.”

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About.Com – “Interview: Jason Mewes”

“…Getting his own place means he moved out of Kevin Smith’s. “Yeah, about two weeks ago I finally moved out. His wife was pretty tired of it. I was ready to stay for another three years, at least… I miss being around the house. I miss being around people; I miss being around family. I consider his wife, his daughter, his mother-in-law, father-in-law – Jen’s parents [family] – and they’re all amazing. The home-cooked meals are great. Waking up going swimming with Harley, just stuff like that, I miss all that.

But Mewes didn’t stray far from the Smiths’ house. “I’m real close – four or five blocks? No, I wouldn’t say four or five blocks, yeah – close. I was trying to figure out the distance, but I’m not real good. It could be a couple miles, but I could be totally wrong. It’s a five minute drive – put it that way.”

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About.Com – “Interview: Rosario Dawson”

“…I have to say it’s a really odd thing. You know, for me personally I think Kevin is so amazing. I was so excited to be called and to be a part of this film – to be on any list to have a position to say yes. I was really grateful for that. Especially for it being based off the first film he ever did. There is a nostalgic factor even for that for me. Being 10 years later and looking at that and starting to get into producing and in the industry for a while and going, ‘This is what I want to do.’ Like the exact same thing as [Kevin’s] doing. Maintaining your integrity, still stretching yourself, but still pushing your boundaries and being able to show both films and see how much he’s grown today – both of which hold up today. And, to me, that’s an amazing thing. To be in a position where he’s grateful for me to be a part of it is so odd for me because I’m so grateful to be a part of it myself.

I think it’s something I’m proud of, that I’ve worked hard enough to be in this position. But it’s also something I think is really funny, because he as well as on the first day realized, this doesn’t fall too far from the tree as much as I think it does. I think a lot of other people, at least my friends and family who watch this movie, will see that this character is a lot closer to my personality, and this movie is, more than anything I’ve done before.”