Clerks III Has More Heartfelt Nostalgia Than Comedy

You might well ask what more can be done with Clerks. How much more can we get from the characters who went from debating Death Star contractors to hosting donkey shows in a restaurant?

The good news is that Kevin Smith has found a way to make these Gen X figures ride off into the sunset with an earnest midlife crisis. The bad news is that it’s mostly nostalgic sentimentality that laments for the good old days, literally reprising the greatest hits of the previous films.

Dante and Randal are back. Courtesy of Lionsgate

I will admit I still have a certain affinity for the mismatched duo of Dante (Brian O’Halloran) and Randal (Jeff Anderson). Now the owners of the Quick Stop, with their stoner associates Jay (Jason Mewes) and Silent Bob (Smith) running the weed store next door, they have a different outlook on life than they once did. Specifically, Randal starts experiencing an existential crisis after a heart attack. Maybe there’s more to life than making geeky references during retail working hours. Maybe he can work toward something bigger.

While his ambitions are certainly grander, the ideals for this legacy sequel of sorts take a pretty easy street, despite being more meaningful. Randal, having been obsessed with movies all his life, decides to go full Tarantino and make a movie of his own. He crafts a screenplay about what he knows best: his own life. And who better to play the roles than the people who once lived them? Sure, they’re much older now, but nobody can say “I’m not even supposed to be here today” quite like Brian O’Halloran.

Jeff Anderson as Randal, Brian O’Halloran as Dante, Kevin Smith as Silent Bob, Austin Zajur as Blockchain Coltrane, and Trevor Febrman as Elias in Clerks III. Courtesy of Lionsgate

Much of the comedy in the film has veered from making absurd commentary on real-life pop culture toward instead referencing its own world. The movie within the movie doesn’t diverge too much from the original story, which feels more like a missed opportunity for absurdity; what we get are familiar scenes played up mostly straight with some director’s commentary placed on top. This is quite literal, as Silent Bob becomes far less silent and makes his filmmaking skills known when it comes to how to shoot inside the convenience store. We also get a lot of in-jokes about Randal wanting to kill off Dante and how franchising their story would be a hack move.

What’s surprising is that while the film doesn’t exactly have the funniest lines, it does have a good heart. Randal’s fear of dying without making a dent in the world feels more real when you actually start rooting for him to assert himself. Dante’s trauma about the past leads to some of the best acting of O’Halloran’s career, and his tearful breakdowns and furious ranting about the direction of his life feel genuine. Even if Clerks III has a look-how-far-we’ve-come angle to all its drama, there’s certainly a level of empathy in how fondly Smith looks back on his first film.

Courtesy of Lionsgate

Surprisingly, the funniest character in the film is its newest addition. Elias, returning from Clerks II, reverts from Christianity to Satanism, and this leads to some fun costume changes. In fact, he changes into a different costume with different makeup for nearly ever scene. This running gag is so much fun, and it’s never belabored by the characters, with Randal only passively making comments about whom Elias resembles most in pop culture. It’s just too bad that Elias’s major contribution to resolving the story is subplot involving a cryptocurrency scheme.

Courtesy of Lionsgate

Clerks III is not the funniest of the trilogy, but it’s certainly the most emotional, for whatever that may be worth. For the Gen Xers who grew up with these characters, there will probably be some tears for the nostalgia at play, lamentations of a simpler time when it seemed like the most important topics were retail shifts, Star Wars debates, and sexual jealousy. This film fits the criteria of other legacy sequels that bring their franchises to a close by giving the old crew one final bow before the curtain falls, assuring the audience that this saga is closed.