HOW CLERKS 2 KEPT ME CAPTIVATED AND CREEPED OUT
I'd like to say that the donkey sex was what creeped me out the most, but lo and behold...
A little backgrounder first, perhaps:
Kevin Smith's movies have always been completely geared toward my demographic. I saw Clerks when I was in my early 20s, working at crappy ass jobs while trying to put myself through college. Unsurprisingly, it spoke to me. The dialogue, the thoughts, and dare I say philosohpies espoused by the two 20-something convenience store cash monkeys struck a chord, like I was seeing somebody performing a play based on a script written using my own finely smooshed brainstuff as ink.
And of course, it would follow that each successive Smith movie equally enthralled me -- each one reflecting all my own continuing life experiences, evolution and culture right back at me, if only due to our closeness in age and interests and thinking patterns and whatnot.
Flash forward to the summer when I first met Meaghan. It was also the summer when I first heard Kevin Smith speak at ComicCon, go figure. The summer where the Jay and Silent Bob movie was about to come out.
The summer where I chose to break up with my fiancée of three years and follow my heart to something I never would have expected.
And now let's come back to Clerks 2.
* * *
The premise is brilliantly realistic: we come right back to the same Dynamic Dialogue Duo about a decade later in their lives... about a decade after the original movie came out.
And what we find here is a now 30-something Dante, who is finacéed to a woman who is not quite right for him. And being offered a great (?) life in a faraway land (Florida), where the rich father will be giving him a house, and a business franchise. Oh yeah, and he works with someone, and realizes at some point that she's totally right for him.
So that certainly starts to get creepy. (though admittedly I wasn't going to get any franchises, and I wasn't working *with* Meaghan, though we *were* both writing out our crossover portion of ther Great Escape the week right before San Diego)
What makes it creepier is how the romance triangle unfolds (I won't give details, so trust me when I say the details also have some creepy coincidences): with a few exceptions (I'll let you guys figure them out), a lot of what transpires and a lot of what Dante faces emotionally in the movie is exactly what I found myself facing that summer in San Diego...
And while it would have been *so* easy to make the fiancée a "bad person" in the movie, she isn't. She proves to be a little domineering and controlling, but overall very smart, pretty, and generally a nice person you'd enjoy hanging around with. And with a certain blunt quirkiness that only adds to her appeal.
Guess what: that was my fiancée, in a nutshell.
* * *
As for the other love interest, well, let's just say that when the "dance scene" came... it was as if I was watching my wife on the silver screen. This just cemented my growing suspicions that clearly Kevin Smith has had video cameras taping Meaghan ever since we first met.
And goddammit if Dante wasn't making very distinct Frank-like facial expressions all throughout the freaking movie. So the suspicion of secret cameras only becomes even more plausible.
* * *
After watching the movie, and of course telling Meaghan pretty much all of these exact same things, I couldn't help but think to myself that I was happy for how everything worked out in the movie, just in the same way that I was happy how my own life had worked out.
And that I found myself thinking how I hoped that Dante's fiancée would find herself a really nice guy more suited for her. Which is what I have always hoped that my own finacée was likewise able to do.
* * *
So yeah. All that to say that this movie was just a little too close to home for me, and it brought back all *sorts* of memories and Feeling Flashbacks.
But the writing was awesome, the characters all perfect (yet again), the ending a very good way to wrap up the Jersey sequence (maybe?)... and overall, it had Meaghan and I howling with teary laughter throughout.
Captivating and creepy. Just like my life, I guess.
[note: minor spoilers]
A little backgrounder first, perhaps:
Kevin Smith's movies have always been completely geared toward my demographic. I saw Clerks when I was in my early 20s, working at crappy ass jobs while trying to put myself through college. Unsurprisingly, it spoke to me. The dialogue, the thoughts, and dare I say philosohpies espoused by the two 20-something convenience store cash monkeys struck a chord, like I was seeing somebody performing a play based on a script written using my own finely smooshed brainstuff as ink.
And of course, it would follow that each successive Smith movie equally enthralled me -- each one reflecting all my own continuing life experiences, evolution and culture right back at me, if only due to our closeness in age and interests and thinking patterns and whatnot.
Flash forward to the summer when I first met Meaghan. It was also the summer when I first heard Kevin Smith speak at ComicCon, go figure. The summer where the Jay and Silent Bob movie was about to come out.
The summer where I chose to break up with my fiancée of three years and follow my heart to something I never would have expected.
And now let's come back to Clerks 2.
* * *
The premise is brilliantly realistic: we come right back to the same Dynamic Dialogue Duo about a decade later in their lives... about a decade after the original movie came out.
And what we find here is a now 30-something Dante, who is finacéed to a woman who is not quite right for him. And being offered a great (?) life in a faraway land (Florida), where the rich father will be giving him a house, and a business franchise. Oh yeah, and he works with someone, and realizes at some point that she's totally right for him.
So that certainly starts to get creepy. (though admittedly I wasn't going to get any franchises, and I wasn't working *with* Meaghan, though we *were* both writing out our crossover portion of ther Great Escape the week right before San Diego)
What makes it creepier is how the romance triangle unfolds (I won't give details, so trust me when I say the details also have some creepy coincidences): with a few exceptions (I'll let you guys figure them out), a lot of what transpires and a lot of what Dante faces emotionally in the movie is exactly what I found myself facing that summer in San Diego...
And while it would have been *so* easy to make the fiancée a "bad person" in the movie, she isn't. She proves to be a little domineering and controlling, but overall very smart, pretty, and generally a nice person you'd enjoy hanging around with. And with a certain blunt quirkiness that only adds to her appeal.
Guess what: that was my fiancée, in a nutshell.
* * *
As for the other love interest, well, let's just say that when the "dance scene" came... it was as if I was watching my wife on the silver screen. This just cemented my growing suspicions that clearly Kevin Smith has had video cameras taping Meaghan ever since we first met.
And goddammit if Dante wasn't making very distinct Frank-like facial expressions all throughout the freaking movie. So the suspicion of secret cameras only becomes even more plausible.
* * *
After watching the movie, and of course telling Meaghan pretty much all of these exact same things, I couldn't help but think to myself that I was happy for how everything worked out in the movie, just in the same way that I was happy how my own life had worked out.
And that I found myself thinking how I hoped that Dante's fiancée would find herself a really nice guy more suited for her. Which is what I have always hoped that my own finacée was likewise able to do.
* * *
So yeah. All that to say that this movie was just a little too close to home for me, and it brought back all *sorts* of memories and Feeling Flashbacks.
But the writing was awesome, the characters all perfect (yet again), the ending a very good way to wrap up the Jersey sequence (maybe?)... and overall, it had Meaghan and I howling with teary laughter throughout.
Captivating and creepy. Just like my life, I guess.
[note: minor spoilers]