ryclaude wrote:chasing amy was pretty good.
I thought that too until I saw it again recently after a long time. Now the novelty of comic-making background and Silent Bob's monologue has wore off, it turned out to be a rather narrow, unimaginative storytelling, and a lot less understanding of human character than I thought before.
Clerks II wasn't terrible as a film itself, but as a sequel to Clerks it was absolutely dreadful. Why? Because you can see Smith rewriting old ideas from the first film, as if it won't be a good sequel if it doesn't follow the same pattern. Case in point:
1. Dante can't decide between two women.
2. Randal insults customers.
3. Obligatory scene of doing something at the roof of the store.
4. Shocking act of sexual deviacy in the end.
5. The scene where Randal pours his heart in the end and shows what's behind his mask.
etc. But he fails miserably if nothing then just because he calls us to compare it to the first film:
1. Dante can't decide between two ladies. But where in first film it was his natural indecisiveness and unability to take control of his life, in sequel it's simple, Hollywood-like he-loves-one-girl-but-doesn't-realise-it-until-the-end shit. In original, at the end of the film he still hasn't decided between the two and after the end he still continues to make the same mistakes, the point that seriously lacks from the second film with it's happy-ending. I think at some point they justified it by "characters being more mature". Lack of imagination and braveness is always justified with "more mature".
2. Randal molests customers, but this time he's not just an annoying guy from the neighbour, this time they go so over the top, full of himself and in power that one can't possibly feel sympathetic of him. In first film he was molesting people randomly, on a whim. In second, he's obviously author's voice, and molests people who represent what Smith himself finds annoying.
In first film, randal was a supporting character. In second, you feel like he's taking majority of the screen time, which is probably because Dante's material was so weak.
But basically, it boils down to "audience loved Randal! Let's give them even more Randal this time!" Heck, why not a "Randal: the movie"?
3. Been done. No reason to repeat it except that we're supposed to say "hey, I remember this from the first film".
4. While necrophillia in the first film appeared naturally from the plot, in here it's a contrieved device. It shouts at us that Smith couldn't think of anything better to end the film. It's totally unrelated to the rest of the plot, there's no point in it and it can only be labeled as "the director felt like putting it in".
5. In first film Randal was de-masked as a sort of follower of Camus' philosophy of absurd, a person who is observant of events but decides not to take part in them. In here, he goes on about friendship and feelings? It's another Hollywood cliche that says that every cool guy has to show his sensitive side sooner or later, but at that point we don't expect anything else but cliche from that film.
"Clerks II" fails because it ends up being a typical Hollywood's romantic comedy, perhaps a bit more funny than the average, at times. It's just another Hollywood movie, which is what I thought was the major disadvantage for "Jersey girl" too. Smith started his career as anything but "just another", be it "Clerks" or "Mallrats". To be brought down to making typical Hollywood now.
Btw. the whole thing with "View askew" is overblown too. It used to be just an inside joke that Smith made here and there, but then obsessive fans grabbed onto them, Smith bought the idea back and now it's supposedly his opus magnum or something. So what, if, say Brian O'Halloran walked to Ben Affleck in "Jersey girl", asked him for time and said "I wasn't supposed to even be here today", suddenly "Jersey girl" would have became a part of something greater than the sum of it's parts? And suddeny another directors started making "view askew" films and fans debating about continuity of events and arguing which film happened before which?
That's like if Claude drew a cameo of Komiyan in his comic and people started debating about in which exact point of "Darken" continuity has Komiyan visited a "Reckless youth" world.
Smith's role as a Silent Bob was equally an inside joke. This would be like if he suddenly started trying to make a dramatic-acting career based on popularity of that one novelty role.
It's completely irrelevant whether some of Smith's films are in or out of "View askew" universe. Being a part of them or not, won't make them and better or worse. That he can's make a good non-view-askew film is a consequence of him not being able to make a good film, period, and not of it's not belonging to the WA-universe.