Go back to Arts & Features indexA cold description of Clerks, which opened Friday at the Lumiere, would lead most people to think it's terrible. That it's not -- that it is, in fact, somewhere between mediocre and pretty good -- is a minor miracle that can be ascribed to a certain freshness, personality and sincerity behind the camera.
The picture was made for a little more than $27,000 -- it's the movie equivalent of a 99-cent meal. It stars a group of non-actors. It's shot in a murky black-and-white by a crew of novices. And it deals with a subject that no one but a convenience-store clerk could possibly be interested in: Convenience-store clerks.
And yet Clerks is OK. It's not better, and that's too bad, since phenomenal quality in the face of a limited budget would have made for a more interesting story. (Expect some inflated reviews around the country by critics giving in to wishful thinking.) Still, when you consider the resources director Kevin Smith had to work with, just "OK" qualifies as an accomplishment.
The film is about a day in the life of a convenience-store clerk, Dante (Brian O'Halloran), who is called into work on his day off and winds up having to put in a couple of shifts. He is the dutiful clerk, while his buddy, Randall (Jeff Anderson), who works at the adjoining video store, is the sarcastic clerk -- the one who isn't nice to his customers, who doesn't want to be there and doesn't care who knows it.
No, no, don't go away -- this gets interesting, really.
The first minutes of Clerks show Dante opening the store early one morning, and like anything that you know is authentic, these scenes have an intrinsic, though limited, fascination. Smith satirizes the various types that come into the convenience store: The fanatic who lectures patrons about smoking. The lady who cleans out the milk case looking for the carton with the latest date. And the fellow who checks every egg in the store to make sure it's not cracked.
None of this is riveting, yet there's something about seeing life from the distinct angle of the convenience-store clerk that's just new enough to hold you. The same could be said for the dialogue. While no one would confuse Smith for Noel Coward, the crude banter between the two clerks -- and particularly between Dante and his girlfriend, Veronica (Marilyn Ghigliotti) -- has a living pulse to it.
"Clerks" almost got an NC-17 rating, which would have been a shame, as it would have forced Smith to cut some of his best bits to get the film shown with an "R" rating. Dante's conversation with his girlfriend about oral sex, for example, is a highlight of the movie -- not that it's brilliant or hilarious (it's neither), but because it turns the camera on the kind of discussion that could easily happen in life but as yet has never been committed to film.
Kevin Smith throws together a series of incidents, hanging it all on a thin plot-line in which the earnest Dante must choose between his devoted girlfriend and the woman he really loves, an old high school flame who dumped him years before. There is a definite "who cares" factor here. I didn't care who these people went out with or what they did, but I didn't mind watching them.
Most of the acting is competent, as in "not annoying" and "they don't fall over the furniture." But Jeff Anderson as Randall, who serves as a sounding board for Dante and offers snide commentary along the way, has a light touch with a wisecrack and a fine sardonic presence. He should have a career.
Actually Kevin Smith originally wrote the role of Randall for himself and intended to play it, before he caught on that directing a movie was going to be hard enough. He did, however, take on the small role of "Silent Bob," a character who appears here and there throughout the picture but for some reason doesn't have much to say.
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