'Clerks II': Funny despite growing pains

It's hard to leave someplace you're comfortable, even when you're pretty sure you should.

Weinstein Company 'Clerks II' 3 out of 5 stars The verdict: Smith's characters not quite as at ease in a 'real' movie. Director: Kevin Smith Starring: Jeff Anderson, Rosario Dawson, Jason Mewes, Kevin Smith, Trevor Fehrman Run time: 1 hour, 37 minutes. Release date: July 21, 2006 Rating: R for language, sexual content and drug use. See showtimes Meet the director Kevin Smith says he seeks to tell stories he can "identify with." On the web Official movie site View the trailer    Trailers require Quicktime Rate 'Clerks II'   Go see it   Make it a matinee   Wait to rent   Don't bother Voter Limit: Once per Hour View Poll Results

That's true for Dante Hicks, the main character of "Clerks II," who, a dozen years after the original movie, still can't escape customer service grunt work. He complains about it incessantly, but even when an inferno consumes Dante's convenience store, he immediately slides into a comparable fast-food job.

It's also true for filmmaker Kevin Smith. After his first attempt to flee the world of characters introduced in "Clerks" flopped (2004's sentimental "Jersey Girl"), Smith wrote a script he knew he could nail. That's good news for fans who would love Smith's films to offer the familiarity of a favorite TV series, bad news for those who (inexplicably) expect him to become a conventional filmmaker and a mixed bag for those of us who enjoy the silly pop-culture riffs and surreal scatology, but keep hoping he'll find something new to do with them.

"Clerks II" expands the original's formula in a couple of inspired ways. Now set in Mooby's, a grotesquely cute burger chain where every ad slogan is an unintended double-entendre, it saddles old clerks Dante and Randal with new sidekick Elias (Trevor Fehrman), a naive kid not quite ready for the world outside his family's home. In this foul-mouthed and opinionated environment, Elias is a maltreated puppy whose occasional attempts at assertiveness just earn him more abuse.

Of the verbal set pieces that audiences will remember here, one hinges on Elias' sexual inexperience; its tone shifts unexpectedly, with touches more common in horror flicks, and earns half the film's most surprising laughs.

The other half comes from a sequence in which Smith, evidently realizing that shockingly explicit sex jokes have become a predictable part of his repertoire, decides to test the limits of what he can say about race. A character's naivete (Randal's, this time) gets this scene rolling as well, but here the humor comes not from his cluelessness but from his indignation when others try to shush him.

Less successful are some of the ways Smith brings his shoestring-budgeted creation into the world of studio production. The stars of "Clerks" were Smith's friends, and (consciously or not) he gave them things to do that required few acting skills. "Clerks II," on the other hand, is a "real" movie, requiring characters to display emotions beyond exasperation and contempt. Brian O'Halloran, as Dante, just isn't up to the challenge. He gets his zingers off about as well as he did the first time, but here he's expected to pull off tender scenes that rely on meaningful silence as well as dialogue delivery. His awkwardness kills some of them, despite a valiant and truly charming performance by co-star Rosario Dawson.

Jeff Anderson, as Randal, unexpectedly acquits himself better, bringing some believable pathos to the smart-aleck role. But he alone can't carry an emotional climax scene that rambles for an astonishing nine minutes and grinds things to a halt.

Part of that scene's problem is that its catharsis is forced, too similar to mainstream-Hollywood stuff that didn't work in "Jersey Girl." Smith makes choices elsewhere -- like whirling his camera in circles around two arguing characters -- that also look like a man trying to speak somebody else's language instead of exploring his own.

Smith is a family man now, not the same dude who made a movie for nothing more than a decade ago, and he clearly wants to deal with subjects bigger than the Death Star. But there are many roads to artistic maturity. Heart-on-sleeve scenes have always been weak in Smith's films, and that doesn't appear likely to change. Smith's path to success may be in learning Hollywood's emotional tricks or (more likely) veering into his own eccentricities a la "Dogma." "Clerks II" leaves the issue as unresolved as the fate of its characters, but it proves that Smith hasn't lost his sense of humor.