Nerdly » ‘Clerks 3’ Review

12th Sep2022

‘Clerks 3’ Review

by Phil Wheat

Stars: Brian O’Halloran, Jeff Anderson, Jason Mewes, Trevor Fehrman, Rosario Dawson, Kevin Smith, Marilyn Ghigliotti, Austin Zajur | Written and Directed by Kevin Smith

Following a massive heart attack, Randal enlists his friends and fellow clerks Dante, Elias, Jay, and Silent Bob to make a movie immortalizing his life at the convenience store that started it all.

Kevin Smith and his cohorts are back for a third round at the Quick Stop and like his previous Clerks movies, this three-quel calls upon Smith’s own life experiences – namely his well-publicised heart attack – to inform the plot. However Clerks 3 is also a huge love letter to Smith’s films and his fans…

A love letter to Smith’s oeuvre in so much as he homages scenes, lines and characters from a myriad of his previous works. The cast of characters he plucked from obscurity in New Jersey all those years ago returning for the first time since that film in some cases. It’s clearly a case of Smith having looked back on his film career following his heart attack and constructed his own love letter to his work. It’s as if Smith has finally found the meaning to his own life INSIDE his own films; he’s come to terms with who “Kevin Smith” the filmmaker is and what his films mean to him. But this is also a love letter to his fans. Clerks 3 feels like Smith saying thanks for letting him create this world, for sticking with him and these characters over the years. Smith stated during the making of Jay and Silent Bob Reboot that the film was for his fans but THIS film really is for his fans!

For Clerks 3 is like a “best-of” his films with nods and in-jokes that longtime fans will appreciate, probably more than anything in the likes of the aforementioned Jay and Silent Bob Reboot. Mainly because Jay and Silent Bob Reboot played things for laughs from the get-go, but Clerks 3 provides laughs with poignancy, with a deep-rooted LOVE for all those involved. It also pays off for those that truly KNOW the lore of Clerks, the stories from outside the film, with some brilliant references to Smith’s experience on the set of his first feature – from Jason Mewes’ apparent shyness (hard to believe now), to the real reason the shutter was closed during the entire original film. It’s small tidbits of information that devoted Smith fans, myself included, will pick up on and that makes this film resonate much, MUCH, deeper with them.

Of course, this is still a Kevin Smith film and he throws in plenty of “Smith-isms” throughout the movie – from the ridiculous audition scene in which Randal and Dante run through a myriad of famous faces, including longtime collaborator Ben Affleck (whose scene in Jay and Silent Bob Reboot is a particular highlight of Smith’s oeuvre, even more so given the history between Smith and Affleck); and the cast of Impractical Jokers, which includes Brian Quinn, a man whose connection to the View Askewniverse goes back years – to the OTT performance from Amy Sedaris as the doctor who attends to Randal after his heart attack. Then there’s Elias, the butt of many a joke in Clerks 2 who, along with Austin Zajur (the boyfriend of Smith’s daughter) become this film’s Jay and Silent Bob – a quirky duo who spend a lot of time dressing up weird and talking a lot of nonsense and who, in the end, come good and help our protagonists in much the same way Jay and Silent Bob did for Randal and Dante in the second Clerks movie.

There’s a thread that runs through Clerks 3 post-Randal’s heart attack, as Randal plucks from conversations he’s had, he’s seen or he’s overheard, to craft HIS story, HIS movie. But the film Randal is making is not his story, it’s the story of his friends, the people who shop at the Quick Stop – that weird and wonderful variety of characters that Smith captured in his Clerks – and Randal’s relationship with Dante. In fact this, like the original Clerks and its sequel, is more Dante’s story, with Randal’s observations of Dante’s life written into the script but told through an unemotional, detached lens.

For whilst in the film Randal’s movie, entitled “Inconvenience”, is supposed to be his story, Clerks 3 actually is HIS story, we’re watching Randal’s story unfold as events occur in the film. Events that make Randal grow up, face his fears and face being an adult at last. Yes, Smith might have touched upon that in Clerks 2, when Randal confronts Dante about re-opening the Quick Stop but doing just that has seemingly held Randal back, the Quick Stop is his comfort zone and without a challenge he reverts to the Randal of old. Clerks 3 eventually changes that for him, finally.

I’ll be honest, all those years ago as I watched the first Clerks, I enjoyed the banter between Dante and Randal but the film never truly captured my attention. But Mallrats, oh Mallrats, that made me a Kevin Smith fan for life! I never identified with the retail experience but two slackers, one of whom was into comic books and video games, hanging around a mall? That I certainly did identify with. Years later, when Clerks 2 was released I was older, had more life experience and had had setbacks in my life and career and so Smith’s film hit me like a ton of bricks. It was the first, and at the time, the only Kevin Smith film I had ever sobbed my eyes out to. Until Clerks 3…

Good god, if Clerks 2 hit me like a ton of bricks, the third film hit me like a wrecking ball. Never, ever, have characters and situations in film ever resonated with me so much. Back in 2006 I was a 29-year-old man writing about movies on the internet whilst holding down a day job to pay the bills. When Clerks 2 was released I saw myself in Dante and Randal; I saw guys who were coasting through life trying their hardest to find their way, even in their 30s. Now I see myself in them again, I’m almost still in the same place I was in 2006… Writing about movies on the internet while holding down a day job – the writing just pays a little bit more of the bills these days. Despite progressing, like Dante and Randal who now own the Quick Stop, the progression doesn’t feel as “life-changing” as I expected and now, some 16 years later, in my mid-forties, the lives and experiences of Dante and Randal hit even more close to home. Which meant that seeing guys who felt like an extension of me (undoubtedly because I saw myself in the duo AND because I’ve essentially grown up with the pair) go through what they do in this film had me balling like a baby… and ultimately doing a little soul-searching too. Much like Smith is doing with Clerks 3.

After seeing Clerks 3 there’s only one thing really left to say. Thank you Kevin Smith. Thank you.