Clerks

Kevin Smith, USA 1994, 92 minutes

Clerks is a particularly bad day in the life of Dante Hicks, convenience store clerk, and some of his friends. Called into work on his day off he still manages to have an extremely full day - aside from the daily grind of the store with all manner of peculiar customers, there’s a rooftop hockey game, a disrupted wake, some illegal activities, major relationship changes and (of course) erudite discussion of the social and political implications of the Star Wars trilogy.

What makes Kevin Smith films like this and the more mature but perhaps less satisfying Chasing Amy worth watching is his scriptwriting. Smith isn’t a particularly talented director. This is particularly evident his later film Mallrats, which fails because Smith has no idea how to direct slapstick comedy. What he has is a genius for characterisation and off-beat (not to mention obscene) humour. Every character from Dante and his friend Randall (whose main hobby appears to be abusing the customers he `serves' at the neighbouring video store) down to the customers is fully drawn with something interesting to say, and while the jokes come fast and furious they are never gratuitous (only gratuitously offensive). Smith skewers with brutal accuracy the misunderstandings of relationships, the morals of modern America, the stupidity of customers (including the tragic fate that awaits school careers advisors) and the total disinterest of those who serve them, with the jokes always flowing naturally from the all too real characters.

The grainy black and white documentary style forced upon the film by budgetary restrictions works well - it helps draw us into the film, and underlines the realisim of the characterisation. The cast of unknowns (Smith's friends) all deliver excellent and naturalistic performances. This is quite simply one of the most fun films you're likely to see, and is certainly essential viewing for anyone who has ever worked in the service industry.

Review by Mark Brown
Taken from EUFS Programme Autumn 1999

Costing about as much to make as two seconds of the execrable Waterworld, Kevin Smith's black-and-white pæan to the valiant, downtrodden millions whose selfless toil behind the counters of the convenience stores of the world keeps society from grinding to a halt is an emminently watchable example of what people are talking about when they refer to `high-quality low-budget independent filmmaking'.

Anyone who has ever worked in the service industry will feel many a pang of empathy as we follow a day in the life of Dante, a goateed young slacker who is talked into going in to work on his day off only to spend a rather surreal day talking to his friend Randall, playing hockey, attending a funeral, undergoing some fairly serious upheavals in his personal life, oh, and dealing with the odd customer every once in a while.

Smith shot the movie at night in the store where he worked, so a plot device is introduced early on to account for the fact that it's dark the whole time (someone has buggered up the shutters so they won't open). The grainy black and white film combines with a rather shaky camera to give Clerks a documentary style, aided by the leads' naturalistic delivery of lines which occasionally feel a little clunky.

Randall is the misanthropic, dropout yang to Dante's virtuous, responsible yin, always leaving the video store over the road unattended to drop by and antagonise Dante, at a total loss to understand the latter's benevolent attitude towards the customers. The issue of The Customer As The Brainless Moron Deserving Of Pity Rather Than Respect raises its head repeatedly, and hilariously, with one particular montage - the stupid questions customers ask - filled with all-too-recognisable things we've all said at some point in our lives as consumers.

Clerks is a razor-sharp and long-overdue champion of an oft-overlooked cause. It won't change your life but it will sure make you treat the guy behind the counter with a little more respect, or maybe caution (remember, the tag-line on the poster was "Just Because They Serve You, It Doesn't Mean They Have To Like You").

"Priceless... an absolute gem ****"- Empire

Review by Ben Stephens
Taken from EUFS Programme 1996-97