Movie Of The Day: Clerks. (1994)

Note: This marks the first in a series of “Movies Of The Day” that will cover writer/director/actor Kevin Smith’s View Askewniverse films, which will be complete in around six weeks.

Made for a little under 30 grand, filmed mostly at night because of day jobs and starring basically some of Kevin Smith’s friends and first time actors, Clerks. is a true independent film, a dialogue-driven comedy inspired by Smith’s own job at the time.

Clerks. tells of Dante Hicks and Randal Graves, two 22 year olds who work next to each other, one at a convenience store, the other at a video rental store. Through the course of a day, Dante has to deal with girl problems, annoying customers, Randal’s unprofessionalism, the two dealers who hang outside, Jay and Silent Bob and of course the fact that he isn’t “even supposed to be here today”.

Clerks. stars Brian O’Halloran, Jeff Anderson, Marilyn Ghigliotti, Jason Mewes and Kevin Smith himself among others, most of whom are best known for their contributions to subsequent Smith films. Trailer and review after the jump.

If you haven’t seen or haven’t even heard of Clerks., stop reading this right now and go get yourself a copy. If you have, well you already know how great it is, so this is pretty useless. Clerks. is simply superb. An inspirational film to any would-be filmmaker, it proves you don’t need big budget high concept movies to entertain the people. All you need is a good script, and good actors. Smith had both.

Smith truly being a master of comedic dialogue rants, some of Clerks.‘ scenes have become legendary, such as the Empire Strikes Back vs Return Of The Jedi debate. It’s no wonder his characters have become so iconic seeing as how well he writes them. These characters are cool, funny, memorable, relatable, realistic, etc… The only faults to be found with Clerks. are due to its tiny budget and even then, I wouldn’t really consider them flaws. And honestly the fact that there’s a lot of profanity really isn’t an issue, and it’s done with taste.

I really don’t have anything to say, it’s a great film and everyone knows it. Clerks. was huge hit, earning over a hundred times its original budget and won well-deserved awards at the Cannes Film Festival, the Deauville American Film Festival and the Sundance Film Festival. The film obviously launched the career of Kevin Smith, now a very well-known name in comedy, who made five subsequent films set in the same universe, with Jay & Silent Bob serving as the main links.

Verdict: An absolute must-see masterpiece. Clerks. currently holds a 7.9/10 on IMDB and an 86% on Rotten Tomatoes.

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