 Before Kevin Smith was podcasting, having a beef with Bruce Willis, or for some reason uncomfortably filming himself crying over superhero movies, he made a little gem called Clerks, which I finally saw for the first time. I want to talk about it today. The Patreon producer on this video is Mint Salad from ASE Presents. It's a YouTube channel focusing on movie reviews just like this one, so head on over and subscribe. Mint Salad's awesome. She's doubly awesome for supporting me on Patreon at the Mithril level. With that membership tier, there's a perk where you get to pick out movies for me to review and give you a shout out like I'm doing right now. So thank you Mint Salad and a triple thank you. This is unheard of a triple thank you for recommending this movie. I had never seen it before and I was very happy I did now. Because as it stands, I'm not a Kevin Smith fan. As a person, I don't have any problems. I don't really have any problems with many people on this planet. I don't know the guy. He seems fine. He seems perfectly harmless. But as a movie maker, the movies I've seen from him I have not liked. Like not just thought we're okay, just straight up have not liked. And it's dawned on me that I've missed a lot of the gems that he put out, the classics. Like mall rats or in this case, clerks. And now after watching this film, I'm kind of a believer. And I want to try some of his other earlier catalog of stuff because clerks is clever. It's witty. It's low budget in a fun way. It's got some hilarious music that's like shitty punk rock. That's not my style, but works so well with the grungy look of this. It totally reminds me of the stuff I shot with my friends. Some of them could act better than others, which is definitely noticeable in this first film. The production values are super low, which is why he shot it in black and white because of lighting inconsistencies. He's able to mask that stuff. Very clever. Very smart. Sure, it's tough for people to get into a black and white comedy. That's pretty much never done. In fact, it's so much easier. It's like a cheat code to put a lot of color in your show. That's why most sitcoms are very bright and punchy with people wearing every color of the rainbow because it elicits joy to the viewer. Putting something in black and white is ballsy. It's bold. It says this film is artsy. It's meant to be taken seriously. There is something refined about it, but that's not the case at all. It's the complete opposite. And I love it to death for that. The film's main protagonist is Dante. I'm not even supposed to be here today. Hicks. Nobody else can cover the shifts at the convenience store, so Dante has to come in on his day off. This store, which I believe I read Kevin Smith actually worked at, doubles as a movie rental shop. And that part is run by Randall Graves. The movie's going to jump between these two characters as they perform their mediocre jobs. They're also going to chat with each other, have debates about Star Wars, which is classic, by the way. And they're going to even play a game of hockey up on the rooftop. The movie's presented in the quasi-SNL style of skits. You could break up five-minute sections of this and they work so well on their own. They don't really contribute to the overall storyline, which is paper thin, but they are so damn funny. The opening is flawless. We have a customer who comes in and he starts lecturing every individual who tries to buy cigarettes, saying that it destroys their lungs. He's got photos. And this joke keeps snowballing to the point where... I just realized I said snowballing, which makes me think of something completely different from the film, but I'm going to stay on track. It snowballs to the point where he has a whole group of people around him while he's preaching about the issues with smoking cigarettes. And then it's revealed that he works for a gum company as he's peddling gum on everyone who goes in there. He's like, don't do cigarettes. Do gum instead. It's just, it's hilarious. Another gem of a moment is when Dante's girlfriend talks about how she snowballs guys and the amount of gentlemen that she's actually gone down on. It disgusts him to no end as this number keeps climbing. Then there's the hilarious section where Randall's on the phone listing off a bunch of different porno movies as a woman looks on and disgusts with her little child, just trying to secure a family-friendly film. It's perfect. It's just perfect comedic timing. Kevin Smith is also acting in this as Silent Bob. He only has one line of dialogue and he and Jay just kind of are interlude pieces. They're hanging out outside. They have nothing better to do than to swear at people going in and just being complete douchebags, which I appreciate. I actually thought they were going to be in this movie a lot more considering how popular they are, but they were fine. They were, they were fun. Clarke's came out in 1994. It's rated R and it has a runtime of an hour and 32 minutes. This is the perfect length of a comedy, an hour and a half. That's how all comedies should be full stop. If you're over that time, then you're losing my interest a little. It's hard to keep people for two hours laughing. So keeping the momentum going, having those jokes land, having a good pace is just paramount and Clarke's knocks it out of the park. A very quotable movie. And it's one that I definitely will watch on repeat. I believe there's two more Clarke's movies. I'm hesitant to watch them. It took me this long to watch the first and I have to say it was worth the wait, honestly. Then again, I didn't really have any expectation because of the chip on my shoulder I have about Kevin Smith movies. But now I'm a believer. Now I'm in. Let me know in the comments. Are his other movies worth watching? Clarke's 2, Clarke's 3. I like Dogma. Dogma was probably my favorite of his up until Clarke's, which I think surpasses everything. Please let me know in the comments if I should watch Clarke's 2 at some point or become a patron and force me to watch it. You can do that as well. Like this video if you had a good time. Thank you once again to Mint Salad for being an awesome contributor you haven't missed yet on a movie recommendation. So all eyes are on you for your third pick. All right, take care and hopefully I'll see you next time.