Review of Clerks: Collector`s Series

Introduction

Dante Hicks (Brian O`Halloran) is woken up on his day off by a phone call from his boss asking him to go to work at the QuickStop in Leonardo, New Jersey, a request he reluctantly accepts as his boss promises relieve him by midday. Once there, he finds the shutter locks are jammed by chewing gum, so he has to fashion a sign from a cotton sheet and shoe polish to assure the public that the store is open. Several hours later, he is joined by Randall Graves (Jeff Anderson) who works at the next-door RST video store. Dante and Randall are polar opposites: Dante is happy to serve the customers and get through the day with as little hassle as possible, whereas Randall enjoys abusing the general public, doing as little work as possible and would love his job if it weren`t for the customers.

Kevin Smith`s breakthrough debut film takes you through an eventful day in the lives of Dante and Randall, which includes, amongst other things, a game of rooftop hockey, a funeral and their interactions with Jay and Silent Bob, the drug dealers who hang out in front of the stores.

Video

Recorded on 16mm film with a minute budget, the film is presented in non-anamorphic 1.85:1 widescreen which shows up all of the scratches and blemishes.

Audio

The Dolby Digital 2.0 Stereo track is unspectacular, but does have an extremely good soundtrack, featuring such artists as Bad Religion, Alice in Chains, Girls Against Boys and Soul Asylum. The rights to the songs accounted for more than half of the film`s budget!

Features

The bonus features start with the film`s trailer, the alternate ending and deleted scenes, which are introduced by Kevin Smith who tells you why they were omitted from the film.

The audio commentary with Kevin Smith, Scott Mosier and various other members of the cast and crew is funny and intermittently informative. Jason Mewes, due to imbibing a vast amount of alcohol, spends almost the entire commentary unconscious on the floor, waking up occasionally to utter a barely comprehensible sentence before passing out again! The sound quality is terrible as everyone was speaking into one microphone, but if you stick with it, there are a few pearls of wisdom to be found.

The video for Soul Asylum`s `Can`t Even Tell` is very good and fits in perfectly with the film, which isn`t surprising as it was directed by Kevin Smith.

There are also `Film Recommendations` for `Rounders`, `Phantoms`, `From Dusk Till Dawn`, `Chasing Amy` and `Pulp Fiction`.

Conclusion

This is the first of the `Jersey Trilogy` which comprises `Clerks`, `Mallrats` and `Chasing Amy` and the film that launched Kevin Smith`s career. It is beautifully written with insight, empathy and humour, the characters of Dante and Randall representing who Kevin Smith was (Dante) and who he wanted to be (Randall).

The acting is nothing to write home about as the tiny budget didn`t allow for `named` actors, so most roles are played by friends or acquaintances of the production team. Smith`s direction is minimalistic, most of the film has no camera movement and it lives or dies on the quality of the script which, fortunately, is brilliant. Smith was able to write the characters realistically as, at the time of filming, he was working in the real QuickStop and RST Video stores and felt so strongly about the job of a `counter-jockey` that the structure of the screenplay is based on Dante Alighieri`s `The Divine Comedy` - hence the name `Dante`.

`Clerks` is one of the few comedies that I can watch over and over again and laugh every time. It`s not going to be everyone`s cup of tea as it`s one of the most explicit films I`ve seen despite having no nudity, sex or violence and the MPAA went so far as to initially give it the dreaded NC-17 certificate!

For a DVD promoted as part of a `collector`s series`, it`s a shame that the film is let down by the less than stellar sound and picture quality and if you don`t already own the film on DVD then I`d avoid this and buy the `Clerks X` tenth year anniversary release.