I love the friendship between Dante and Randall in the second movie that showed how The characters mature that prison scene was amazing it gave the characters a perfect sendoff.
Plain and simple: Clerks 3 was devoid of heart and humor. However, I will say Brian O'Halloran acted his ass off. Too bad that effort was wasted by this movie.
Devoid of heart? That movie was all about heart, pun not intended. I can agree with you about the humor not being a large part of the film like the other 2 series , but heart I can’t agree with. Respectfully, may I ask the age you saw the film at? I am cuz I’m curious cuz I saw it at the age of 48 and as I was approaching my 50’s, the age I am now, my mortality has been something that has been on my mind. My parents passed in their early 60’s so I could be right on track to follow that-at least that is my concern. So seeing this film at an older age and growing up with the characters it hit with me and I did feel the emotion of this film. I wonder if a younger audience doesn’t relate as much to this and just wants to have a good time. I also wonder if I saw this film at a younger age say early 30’s or younger, if I would be bored with it and not get the emotion. Maybe I’m wrong though. It could be that an audience expects certain humor from a Kevin Smith movie and when it doesn’t hit, the movie is a let down. I know when I saw the 4:15 movie I expected a certain humor, dick and fart jokes, crude sex jokes, etc and it never really hit. To me that film was a bit of a let down, but I think I built it up to be something it wasn’t supposed to be.
I just finished watching Clerks 3. I think I'm just going to ignore it in my head Canon. Killing off Becks and his daughter just felt so wrong. Clerks 2 was the perfect ending that brought Dante and Randall's story full circle. Clerks 3 just felt like Kevin wanted to bring his own story full circle but it came at the expense of his characters.
The donkey felt like over kill the first time i watched it but i came around to especially after hearing how they got that guy to do his scene with the donkey 😂
@@TheDrizzle56the family of the main character and any hope of a happy life seconds after finally achieving one after a lifetime of misery. All offscreen in between movies. But both cases are only nightmares that Dante and Ripley are having.
😂🤣 the movie is Clerks... Nobody is beloved 😄 Jay and silent Bobby are the only "beloved" can't be replaced douchebags. I did enjoy the movie Vulgar but I don't know if I did because I was a fan of these actors or if it was actually good 😅
You perfectly summed up how I felt after watching Clerks 3. And I saw it in the theater surrounded by Kevin Smith fans! (It wasn't one of the Roadshow screening with Kev, it was the Fathom Events one, but still.) Everyone (well, most everyone) seemed to be laughing and enjoying, and I was dumbstruck. Were we watching the same movie? And then, halfway through the flick, it dawned on me what the ending was. With Becky being dead, my mind flashed to the trailer, of Becky and Dante watching a movie in a theater...and she grabs his arm. This ghost, that he has not interacted with physically in this movie, will suddenly be able to touch him. I knew then that Dante was going to die, and I thought that was what ruined the movie for me. But it wasn't the knowing...well, not *just* the knowing, but the whole movie leading up to it. I've been a Kevin Smith fan since jump. I even used to write for MoviePoopShoot back in the day when it was a real site. But this left me so disappointed. You nailed exactly why. Bravo.
Part of the issue I think is Smith's experience with the heart attack. Clerks cast a wide net. There are many people who have worked at mundane jobs and who have a goofy sense of humor. And though most of us haven't gotten into a fight at work, seen a donkey show, or boinked a dead guy, we have had day dreams that weird while working at our mundane jobs. Clerks was a movie any average Joe or Jane could relate to. Then comes Smith's heart attack, which I understand was a bit of a life changing moment for him. And that's awesome. It's awesome he can reframe his life and get an almost spiritual experience out of something bad. The problem is, most of us haven't had life changing heart attacks. Most of us aren't preoccupied with loss and death. So, we can't really follow Smith on that journey.
Christy boi eh? Well, boo hoo sorry your feelings were hurt church boi, but real people loved this film and in much the same way I adore both Randal and Supernatural's Bobby. Also I LOVED ELIAS IN THIS!! Talk about finally growing a pair instead of being a Jesus Freaky Hippiy long stockings. I love satanic Elias, because at least now he's not some little Jesus Cock Licking Church boi.
After being a simp to his girlfriend in the second perhaps Dante could have been that father figure to show him the ups and downs of love and relationship as he lived it in his past. But no.
Clerks 3 depressed me. Even before the death that was suppose to depress you. Just a depressing tone even during the comedic moments. I wasn’t a big fan of Jay and Silent Bob Reboot, but I enjoyed that much more than Clerks 3.
This video is why I stopped at Clerks 2 - I just couldn’t watch these characters and films that meant so much to me, continue to degrade. You don’t come of age as a film geek in Jersey during the late 90 without falling in love with Kevin Smith. Clerks meant so much to me precisely because I wished I’d made my own Clerks. That story behind the movie was an integral piece of enjoying the movie. Clerks 2 was a good send off to the entire universe. Every thing after just made me sad. Maybe this film works better 10 years ago, but all those actors look way too old for this stuff. And we as his primary audience have grown up. Unfortunately Kevin didn’t.
Clerks 3 has the best acting out of all of them, it is a phenomenal showcase of how far they have grown. Give it a try, preferably with some friends then make up your own mind. You might still agree with him or you might agree with me that it’s one of his top movies. It’s definitely not better than Dogma in my mind but I put it in my top 3 for Kevin Smith
I still want Kevin Smith to finally release *"Batman:Bellicosity"* with Walt Flanagan... I discovered who Kevin Smith was in 2002 thanks to *Green Arrow: The Sound of Violence* , and it's sequels *Batman: Cacophony* (2008/2009) and finally the highly divisive *Batman: The Widening Gyre* (2009/2010)... It's been 13 years of blue balls since I first read the last couple pages of that last one, and the reassurance, every couple years, from Kevin Smith that *Batman: Bellicosity* was on its way, didn't help. Almost as bad as GRRM's TWOW for me...
Thank you for articulating why this Clerks 3 upset me so much! I don’t understand the overwhelmingly positive reviews it’s getting. Especially when the essential message of the movie is, “Oh you’re depressed and lonely? Maybe you’ll be happier if you died”.
Glad to see I'm not the only one who was disappointed by the 3rd movie. Most of my friends seemed to love it but I personally did not care for it. You pretty much hit the nail on the head with this video. I feel the same way you do.
I watched it with my friend group the other week. We went into it hyped and ready. Once the film ended, we were silent. It was very poorly received by all.
I personally love this movie cause life is not far and your happy ending sometimes doesn’t happen and the worst part is when u think u have it figured out and something take all of it always it’s hard to keep going and I just relate to this movie and I wish I didn’t understand it to well
Rosario was also working on her Star Wars spinoff show at the time as well, so she was just hard to get. But she loves the character of becky so im glad she did come back
Why kill her off in a pointless way and basically erase the ending of Clerks 2? Just have her home with the kids and that could easily explain why we don't see her that much.
I deleted clerks 3 from my memory after watching it at the plane back from my holiday vacations. It was so depressing that my brain simply deleted it from my cache memory.
Kevin smith's last good movie was Jay and silent Bob strike back. Clerks 2 had funny moments, but Kevin lost it once he started sucking up to Hollywood in the early 2000's. Nowadays he just makes lame movies that cater to Hollywood and something to give his wife and daughter work,because they aren't going to find it anywhere else.
I'm so glad you put out this video because I completely forgot the movie had even existed and hadn't watched it yet and now I'm just not going to. So thank you because you saved me from wasting my time
@@PatrickPaul1203 I guess I could give it a chance but I already saw James Bond die. I don't really want to see Dante die. The James Bond thing got to me I'm not sure I'm ready to deal with that. Still love Smith but IDK
I like the original ending with Dante being shot. Not that I didn't like the character, but for a movie on its own, without the legacy that came after it, it was a perfect, brutally ironic ending. It was definitely art.
I was worried Clerks III would not top the ending to Clerks II. I was prepared for the plot to have some depressing midlife crisis since both Dante and Randal are now in their late 40s. However, I was not prepared for how depressing and just bad Clerks III would be. I completely agree with your criticism. On my way home from the theater, I thought of an alternative story plot that would have still kept the essence of what Kevin Smith was trying to do as a tribute to his first movie while making a point about mortality. Dante still loses his wife BUT he has a daughter. The daughter grows up with Dante and "Uncle" Randal. Randal still has a heart attack, thinks he has wasted his life and decides to make a movie. However, during the process he realizes he does have meaning and a legacy. His relationship with Dante's daughter and being part of that family. Dante still has a heart attack and dies. However, when he is with his wife watching the movie, he realizes his daughter will be fine with Randal still there. The movie ends with Randal and Dante's daughter at the funeral realizing Dante help made them who they are while also understanding they have each other as family. The movie ends similar to Jay and Silent Bob Reboot. That families come in many different shapes and sizes, but family is what gives meaning to life. Also take out the weird Santanic Elijah plot. It was funny for a couple minutes but it was a joke that went on too too long.
Yeah, I had a similar thought when watching it. ‘Okay so you can’t get Rosario back, but wouldn’t it give Dante more of a drive in the film if he was looking after a kid?’ Maybe the kid worked shifts there, maybe Dante feels Randall is a bad influence? Maybe the heart attack inspires Dante’s kid to make something of themselves. And then you’ve opened up a whole new opportunity for new characters and an actual plot. Rather than us all having to rewatch Clerks being made in a very meta way by a bunch of 50 year olds. I think the unspoken thing here is that Smith became Indie-famous at a very early age. His life experience is very different to all of ours. That’s not a bad thing, but all this latest stuff feels so maudlin and backward, it’s just someone trying to catch something that’s never coming back. Or at my most cynical, someone milking their cult audience to pay the mortgage.
I had a heart attack a year before Kevin Smith had his. When he decided he was going to make a movie about the experience and what lies after survival I was thankful. Lots of my friends died in their 40s of heart attack. I and Smith survived the big one. I was expecting a movie about life going forward and doing the things we dreamed of doing our youth. Not going back to our 20s which isn’t possible. I’m sad for this movie. Killing of Rebecca was stupid. Then they kill Dante off? Why? It should have been serious but funny. To bad he didn’t ask advice from Mel Brooks.
It's the end of clerks, it's supposed to be a final thing. Or did you really want to continue untill all actors are behind strollers? His films always got a lot of flack thus I'm more inclined to give him the benefit of doubt. To me the movie is fine but I get people expected more.
@@Burtlocker Contrary to popular belief life doesn’t end at age 50. Yes he should have grown old to see his kids and grandkids grown up. People should enjoy the fruit of their labor into old age. They earned it.
The scene in the graveyard contradicts the ending and Dante’s conclusion. It implies that he should want to move on and then he just doesn’t? Kinda strange
If Kevin Smith remade Clerks III I would be very happy with that. I watched Clerks III once on Blu-Ray. I put the disk in a fire and watched it melt immediately after.
YOU ARE SO CORRECT!! Sadly, though, Kevin Smith will never see it this way because too many of his paying "fans" have told the emperor they love his new clothes. I wish he would return to writing films like Red State & Tusk. I was happy with that career turn. Who knew he'd take that long back slide into rehashing his previous efforts? For a man who has been writing films for 30 years, his last few outings feel like they were written by an amateur!!
Clerks 3, Godfather 3, and Highlander 2 don't exist in my universe. I'd like to see what the characters from Mallrats are doing instead. He should have made that sequel
I've been hearing about a 2nd Mallrats forever. I shot the breeze w Jeremy London at a comic convention one time and asked him about it. Dude even showed me a text on his phone, supposedly from Kevin about working on getting it going. This was 2014-15ish. All that said, he was decent to talk to, outside that question I had for him we just chatted about random stuff.
As crazy as it may sound, I think the only solution to this is another one. Clerks 3.5, where it's revealed that the entirety of Clerks 3 was a bad movie script written by Randall.
They could just retcon the ending with an alternate ending where after the dante becky scene in the theater the camera pans out to darkness (then it pans out from randall's eyes.) Randall: so that's my movie idea. Pretty fuckin sweet right? Dante: you kill me in your movie?!? What am i, some hidious fucking chud? Becky: really weak graeves. Dante& becky's kid: Fuck you uncle randall. (Fade to black) That's how i would have ended it😂
I cried at the end of Clerks 3, not because Dante died but because it ruined the original, and the sequel for me. I’ve literally had to take a couple months off of not watching or listening to anything Kevin Smith related just so I can remember the original Clerks and love it again for what it was and what it meant to me, I’m just going to pretend this third movie never happened (and I really wish every time I went on TH-cam I didn’t keep seeing these reviews of the movie reminding me of its existence)…
I agree, I thought they killed off Becky because Rosario Dawson wasn't going to be in it, but she had scenes 💀 I get the heart attack stuff, but it seems a bit pointless to kill off his family
@@tyronegorman8949 rosario was one of the reasons why the second movie was so popular lol. no reason why they essentially wrote her out. especially the way they did
I totally agree with this video. I really had to force myself to get to the end of clerks 3. The first 2 movies are classic, and kevin dropped a big steaming stinker for #3.
I really enjoyed Clerks III. I saw it at 48 years old, and for me it seemed like these characters grew up with me. I loved the ending and teared up. It may not have been as funny or raunchy as the other 2 but it was more mature, and so was I at the time of seeing. I laughed at some of the jokes, but as I get older and think about my own mortality and those around me, this movie hit a sweet spot in my heart. I still cannot watch this movie without tearing up at the end. I know in the second film Randal said there is only one trilogy, but damn it there are always room for more trilogies and this one is one of those films. Clerks did t die on 3, though a character I loved did. Now if we want to talk about a Kevin Smith film without humor we should talk about the 4:15 movie. It was fine but I was expecting more raunchy humor.
i lost respect for kevin smith with all that he-man stuff. he was awesome, but now he's pretty tame. i don't know, it's almost like as if almost dying changes you. 🤷♂️ great video though 👍
I liked the movie because it was kind of a natural progression from the first two. Clerks 2 had an aura of melancholy to it because there was this theme of life moving on, getting old and feeling like your life was going nowhere, yet I still laughed uproariously throughout, whereas here it gets really morbid and deals with death and not taking your life for granted, which makes for a good story, but unfortunately the movie lacked the laughs even if it had the substance. Dante losing his wife and daughter pretty much immediately after the events of Clerks 2 felt like what they did with Alien 3 and Terminator: Dark Fate. The ending was an emotional gut punch, and I think it was Smiths best film since Zack and Miri, but it was probably the most depressing comedy I've ever seen, and considering the first two were uproariously funny, this felt a tad out of place, even if it did feel like a natural progression.
It was not the natural progression for Randal to be a dick to his best friend while being the only constant in Dante's life. The movie didn't need a Happy Ending and Dante could have still died. However, he didn't need to end with realizing he wasted his life with a dick of a friend. You can have a sad depressing ending that is just written better. Clerks 3 was not..
@@MrBlink1980 I believe the point in that was that Randal, after his heart attack, had this newfound drive in life and became so focussed on making the movie, he took his friendship with Dante for granted. But then when Dante suffered a heart attack himself, it knocked sense into him. The film really is about how you can take your loved ones and your health for granted, kinda like how a married couple sometimes do. Yes, Randal did come across as a bit self centred and micromanaging when it came to directing the movie, but I'd put that down to his drive to make the movie at the expense of everything else, including Dantes feelings. Whether that makes you root for the character is very debateable, but that's how I interpreted it.
Clerks 3 didn't work at all because Kevin Smith went full Hollywood. He lost every and all touch with the regular person, he's been making movies of this quality for a while like Yoga Hosers and up.
He caters to his audience. Not one of his movies since Cop Out has been anything remotely Hollywood. Many were four walled. He knows what kind of movies he wants to make and his fanbase appreciates and adjusts his budget accordingly.
I don't get it. Clerks 2 had such a satisfying ending, where everyone grew up and found their place and then Clerks 3 has the murder OF A MOTHER AND CHILD! Did we get a name for the kid? Why weren't they there to see their dad as he died? Even if she was less than a year old she could have been in her mom's arms. Loving your kids more than your own life only comes after a year I guess?
Being that Kevin has said that he sort of sees himself in Dante. I really feel like the whole point of this movie,was tell his audience something. That something was that he hates his oldself, and hates the people who like that guy, so much that he killed him off. Still cried like a child at the ending, it came out on my birthday and am closer to 30 than 20.
Kevin Smith movies died awhile after Kevin Smith became successful. His original stuff was great because Kevin was in touch with the everyman. But success have removed him from the everyman, and now he's so far removed that he can't resonate with us anymore.
It got a couple little chuckles and smiles out of me. The two biggest problems, I think, are that A) there’s simply not enough comedy in the movie to begin with (it’s more of a tone deaf drama), so coupled with the insanely dark and depressing story directions, the movie just feels largely humorless, and B) Kevin Smith has apparently reached a point where he equates “cute” with comedy. You can see it in his performance as Silent Bob now and in a lot of the cornier humor that crops up more and more in his movies. He’s not telling jokes or writing funny lines of dialogue anymore, he’s just making everything light and cutesy and using that as his humor substitute a lot of the time. Also, a lot of the dialogue is just bad, questionable, or groan worthy. There were also zero Clerks-style, stop-and-talk conversations sprinkled with funny observations. Not one. That’s like the entire hook of a Clerks movie, and even Clerks II attempted it in places. There’s also like one lame running gag about people thinking Randal’s movie is an “adult film” that just feels lazily dropped in places. There’s no funny timing with it like there was with the shoe polish gag in the first movie or anything. So all in all, not a very good comedy film to say the least.
Kevin and I are about the same age. The slacker era. At the time he was making his movie I was making friends with the person for Middletown NJ. So I felt a little extra connected to the whole thing. Also at that time I was working in a video store. A little mom and pop place. With the pron in the back. I love that Kevin Smith puts his whole soul into a project. He's very revealing and personal. I always admired that. To continue the parallel, I also had a heart attack. I also had to change my life because of it. He's better at losing weight than I am. I don't think Kevin will ever be the filmmaker that Spielberg or Lucas became. And that's okay. His projects are very accessible to the everyday person. Keep making them I'll keep watching them.
Although it was released on September 13, 2022 I didn't finally cave in and watch Clerk III until a couple of weeks before Christmas. Despite the fact that I still had some hope that Kevin Smith could pull it off, it was just as bad as any of his last 3-4 films. I mean... the 'die had been cast' and was beginning to rear it's head somewhat in "Jersey Girl" and "Zack & Miri" but now Kevin Smith's outings in the directorial chair strangely resemble that of a punch drunk fighter, entering the ring to face yet another consecutive defeat. It's hard to watch!
Kevin Smith actually became worse when he started smoking weed. I prefer to pretend that Clerks III never happened, I'll stick with the animated series. I felt like I was watching a "How to Prevent Heart Attacks" PSA, I get it, but dammit, Dante didn't deserve all that. I believe he's still doing a Mallbrats movie, and I'm not looking forward to watching Brodie get assassinated by Zack Snyder.
@@seewhativescene Oh don't get me wrong, I would HATE to blame weed but....there's a correlation. The minute Seth Rogan handed Kev his first joint, his work has suffered.
I don't think he sold out. It was always about elevating himself, we just bought into his geek story of being one of us when really he was just using us because we were the only group that would listen.
Yeah sort of the same boat. I really didn't like clerks 3 at all. I don't even think I laughed once and fast forwarded through a lot of it. I bought a copy of it just to support Kevin but this one was just trash. Still a KS fan and probably always will be but he was never able to surpass the original clerks and that is fine. He did more than I ever did.
So when I was in middle school I first seen clerks 2 which was the first clerks movie I saw and I loved it. When I got older I was able to watch clerks 1 which was good but I always loved clerks 2 a little more. Today I was about to rewatch it on this movie app and I saw clerks 3 and I was shocked because I didn’t even know it existed. Being the fan I am of course I watched it. Everything you said in this video is what I was thinking the whole time watching this Movie. What a disaster. I honestly don’t ever want to watch clerks 3 ever again
I watched clerks 1 and 2. And mallrats and Jay and silent bob strike back. And dogma. But never clerks 3 and it looks like I've dodged a bullet with clerks 3.
Kevin Smith was a very lucky, mediocre talent and that became very clear in about 1995. The problem was he was popular with the 90s Gen X audience. But that was three generations ago. Now all he does is cry. I say this as a former huge fan, who listened to hundreds of hours of podcasts over many years and seeing his movies in empty cinemas also for many years. This is relevant because I have a clear memory of when he was making Zack amd Miri, on the podcast he talked about Clerks 3 and he would make it when he has a good idea where to take the characters because currently (and I quote) "The only thing I can think of was them making a movie in the QuickStop, so it shows I dont know where to take them!" And then about 15 years later: this.
Wow. I'm glad someone said it! This is actually even harsher than I would have put it, but no lies detected. I would have said, he's someone who has severely overreached his talent, and has become decreasingly aware or even remotely likeable about it.
Jay and silent bob are stupid characters that only work in small doses. A third rate Cheech and Chong or Bill and Ted, if they were real I would kick the shit out of them. They are fucking clown shoes!
This is the first time I've even heard about Clerks 3. I used to watch in anticipation for a Kevin Smith movie. Now the most entertainment I get is cringing from him crying about EVERYTHING. Dude is a joke
Now that Kevin Smith has stopped smoking weed. I think he should just try to remake Clerks III, only making it good. The only good part of C3 was the end when Dante dies, and that genuinely made me fucking cry. Please consider a remake Mr. Smith.
Great video as I agree with you 100%. Only point I make that you didnt is that KS already did C3 when he did Zack and Miri. I had such high hopes after C2. But the VA is dead, over, done.
Probably best one doesn't make a "tribute" to their own work. Especially decades afterward when everyone has grown into significantly less cool people than they were. Not to mention the whole Kevins alienation of more than half own fan base.
I feel like a 3rd movie wouldn't have worked no matter how you created it. Clerks 1 stands on its own, and 2 was like a sweet compliment cherry on top. 3 is overkill. The biggest issue here is that Kevin Smith either simply sold out to the Hollywood machine, got too old to be an edgy director, or both. Watching the film, it felt cheap. Felt like a straight-to-streaming movie with Hallmark-level cinematography, and wondered if Smith even REMEMBERED how to direct a film, and almost every actor has gotten TOO OLD to keep that youthful edge this franchise always required and needs to thrive. Weird robotic camera angles, wooden acting, extremely dry jokes, useless characters with ZERO reason to exist (i.e. angry Black woman with her husband and daughter supervising Randal and Dante's film for her daughter's college class, who felt like she was just there so Kevin can have some non-White people incorporated, then ironically and cluelessly going for the "Angry Black Woman" stereotype no less, smh...). Kevin Smith used to push the boundaries of political correctness and status quo, but here it's like he's afraid to say ANYTHING controversial, which tells me he was egg shell walking so he wouldn't upset the whacko basement dwellers on Twitter. Well, he succeeded on that as NOBODY has uttered a peep about this film very soon after its release. The Jay and Silent Bob reboot's mediocrity should have told us this disappointment was coming. In a world where there is SO MUCH to bash, from overreaching governments, to moronic street blocking protesters, to whining Twitter twits, to an oversaturation of superhero bullsh*t, to gender delusional screaming extremist Leftoids, to language and online censorship gone bonkers, to social media obsession, to even freaking Trump as former president, etc etc etc Smith not only doesn't even mention it, he purposefully runs far far away from it, leaving us baffled. I honestly think Smith needs to just hang it up and retire. I don't forsee ANY good film coming from him at all anymore.
You nailed what happens a lot in comedy movie sequels is they shift the focus of the first main character to the "best friend" or some other supporting character when I don't think it ever truly has worked out before. For example the American Pie sequels became more about Stifler and the spin offs started being just more about Stifler's family and it just becomes too much of that character 😆
And it's actually pretty remarkable that there was actually a Stifler spinoff universe. I mean it's on par with Corey Feldman direct to video movies, but he really made a career out of MeToo, one of the last.
Wasn’t Rosario Dawson’s character pregnant and she Just Dies I’m glad I didn’t waste time watching it it don’t know how you sat through 4 viewings of dumpster fire I’m also sick of him shoving his untalented daughter into everyone’s projects she ruins everything she’s in
Personally, I would say Clerks died with Clerks 2. Don't get me wrong, Clerks 2 is a good movie, it's very funny, and as you said, it retains the heart of the original. However, my observation of it was that: Clerks equals mid-20s slackers, aren't they adorable. When will they get their lives together? Clerks 2 equals late 30's/early 40's slackers, and that's just kinda sad. I remember the part about Randall saying he buttfucks high-school girls and I was thinking, that that's just creepy and gross. How fucked up is New Jersey that high-school girls want to have sex with shlubby middle aged losers? Also, while the dialog is funny, there's just something ridiculous about watching middle-aged guys talking and behaving exactly the way they did 20 years ago. Nevertheless, Clerks 2 does end on a high note and progresses the characters, so while it starts off fairly pathetic, it at least ends with Dante and Randall finally growing up. Lastly there's no way around it, these guys are fucking old and they look fucking old. Yeah, they're not "get off my lawn old," but damn they got grey hair, turkey neck, jowls, etc. and if watching 40 year old guys behave like 22 year Olds was ridiculous, then watching 55 year olds do it would be outright pathetic. That's why I plan on passing on Clerks 3, I'd rather have Dante and Randall go out on a high note with their dignity still intact.
I went to see this with my gf when it came to our local theatre (in NJ). We have different levels of love for Clerks, but she adores it and went in very excited. She left crying. And I can't say I enjoyed myself either I actually do think this was a well made movie that had good performances, but that's on a technical level. Story wise, it's the worst of Kevin Smith's failings. One, he keeps running back to View Askew-niverse because most of his other projects aren't successful and he keep trying to milk nostalgia and past praise. Two, he keeps undoing the hope of every Clerks ending. The first one ends with Dante going to change his life and then you find out he didn't. Then you think he's gonna run a business with a family but no, that gets taken away too. And finally this movie exemplifies both because he basically remakes Clerks with the ending he originally wanted, even though it makes the series end on the shittiest of notes. And then he begs his fans to see it because of nostalgia. I think it says a lot that he couldn't get a mainstream release of this; for all the skill he had, Kevin Smith just doesn't seem to bring them in any more. For me, this all ends with Clerks 2 and Jay and Silent Bob reboot (which for all it's flaws, does have more humor and heart then this).
I'm going to say "The Walrus" was a so good it's bad movie. Kevin Smith's new soy boy self seems sus. He diddled someone inappropriately at some point, that's how Hollywood soy boys are made.
I actually found Clerks III to be worth watching, but only worth watching once, which puts it in stark contrast to most other Kevin Smith movies which I've rewatched countless times. I completely agree that Mallrats doesn't need to get the same treatment.
I appreciated this movie from a nostalgia perspective because I’m a really big fan of the first two movies and the rest of the universe but unfortunately I can rewatch those movies. I have no interest in re-watching this movie.
I just watched clerks three yesterday. Obviously, I think the first one is the best, the second one I find is actually pretty brilliant and pretty good and I like the ending of the second one but the third one just felt like Kevin Smith ran out of ideas so he thought having the characters go out and shoot the first movie would be compelling enough. I understood the first heart attack for Randall, but I thought the second heart attack for Donte was a little bit pointless. I think he could’ve come up with another way to get those messages across instead of having one of the characters die off. I just feel like Kevin Smith really didn’t know what he wanted to do with the third film, which is a shame. I was really hoping the third one would be a lot better. 🙏🏻
It would've been interesting if Dante and Becky were pretty happy with kids. Randall has a heart attack, it finally hits him that he's a 50 year old man with nothing and he doesn't just want to be a Clerk in NJ for the rest of his life. There was a story here but Kevin dropped the ball.
I grew up with the first film and it may be the one movie I've watched more than any other. I vehemently *hated* the idea of a second film at the time but I went to see it in a theater, by myself, and was happily shocked how heartfelt, hilarious, and worthwhile it turned out to be. The jailhouse scene in the third act is some of Kevin's strongest material he's ever written and filmed. I never thought Jeff Anderson would go for a third film because he barely did Clerks II and the whole audit situation between Kevin's naivety and Weinstein grifting the residuals understandably pissed off Anderson and Mosier. When Kevin officially announced it, I grimaced because as much as I grew up loving Kevin, even I recognize his material has not been up to par for like ten years - even though I do enjoy Tusk for its bizarre exploitation novelty and Michael Parks' performance. Jay and Bob Reboot wasn't nearly as bad as I imagined it would be but it's still not good, and Kevin's present day films have this odd look and feel like the whole production wrapped within a work week. Unfortunately, I watched Clerks III and I hated it. It wasn't funny. It looked cheap which is wholly weird to say about a Clerks movie, I know, but it lacked passion and indie charm. I could not stand the choice with Dawson's character as a Force ghost who pops in and out. The plot didn't even make sense. Then Dante dies in a hospital bed. Nevermind the whole NFT nonsense... it's just bad. I'm genuinely shocked Anderson agreed to do this script and it's no shade on any of the actors, they did a great job, but the screenplay and direction is very weak and kind of embarrassing compared to the previous Clerks films. I'm going to live the rest of my life firmly believing the story of Dante and Randal ended with Clerks II, thank you very much.
I both enjoyed and hated the movie. To have Becky and the unborn baby killed off like that? Gah. Didn't like that choice at all. However, I can imagine someone being in a slump for a long time after something like that. Not sure Becky was a force ghost and not just Dante's imagination tho. The ending was sad. Sad good imo, but sad none the less, but while I thought it was good, it's part of what I hated about it. Kill off Dante? Why?! Dante never really getting a happy ending...yeah...that's life I guess. :/
@@mayotango1317 Clerks III isn’t real life. It’s a movie. People all inevitably experience hard losses and grapple with their own mortality. It’s just a part of life. Death is always ubiquitous. So why does a movie - a *comedy,* no less - need to kill off characters people have been endeared to for literally decades just to elicit an emotion and make the audience feel sad about death? What was the point? If it’s really just to say “life sucks and death happens”, that’s a pretty dour and superficial message that doesn’t need to be offered to anyone who is alive and cognizant.
@@mayotango1317 I’ve been watching the first movie since I was 13 and I’m turning 30 this year. I’ve seen it at least a hundred times by now and it’s legitimately one of my favorite movies hands down. I adore it. What’s your point?
Clerks died when the Kevin Smith who said music numbers in movies full of Hollywood friends is bad filmmaking, went and did that with his Clerks characters....because money.
I couldn’t agree more! Loved clerks and clerks 2 is one of my all time favorite films but I just couldn’t get into 3. It seems like my at one time favorite director due to his great dialogue and character development has completely forgotten how to due those 2 things that made him great in the first place?!? It would be like Larry Holmes forgetting how to throw a jab! Clerks 2 was amazing it told a story that so many of us can understand but his last 2 films are just so meta it’s downright heartbreaking.
Honestly as someone who lost his brother about a year before that movie came out. I actually found Clerks 3 really therapeutic for me. I understand why people don’t like it though. Honestly though. The 430 movie is the best movie he’s made in years. Didn’t think I’d be saying that.
Enjoyed this video a lot. I'm a big fan of Kevin Smith, but his last few movies have been hit or miss. Hope he bounces back with his next movie. Also glad you're still uploading, i enjoy your videos a lot.
silent bob and jake strike back was the first film of the series i watched and know about. and then i found out it was a spin-off of clerks. ive been watching all the films of the franchise every decade when they come out, but i keep forgetting who's who exept for silent bob and jake.
If they had to make a third movie this was actually a great setup. It could’ve lead to a loving tribute to independent filmmaking, how that’s changed over the years and the profound impact making such a film could have on a person’s life. It was basically the setup for the ultimate thank you to Kevin Smith’s fans. Instead it just needlessly crapped on everything fans could’ve expected from this movie and only paid tribute to the series in the laziest ways possible.
Oddly, the way the first movie is described here in the first two minutes might have sounded more geared to 2023, with the weirdness and oddity. Problem is that it's no longer 1994. Indie film makers get to do this one time. Anything beyond that, and you're venturing down the path of self-parody. Smith got away with it in the sequel, because it ties things together in a semi-dramatic way. To me, that's where the story ended. I had zero desire to see the third installment because I knew part two was straddling that line close enough for me. The trailer alone felt like a waste of time. It also didn't help that so many years passed between each one. Smith clearly felt he had to play to younger audiences in both sequels, and in C3 it became outright pandering and a very clumsy reach. If I had to compare it to something, the first thing that comes to mind is Stephen Colbert. Brilliant satire/parody followed up by unoriginal virtue signaling to a pre-determined demographic that can only live ironically in past successes. The street cred brought people in, the comeback found people vicariously living in the past.
I agree with alot of what is said in this video. However it provided the closure i wanted. I think that part of Clerks 3 shows us that lifeisnt always hockey games on roofs and friends aren't always perfect . Life sucks sometimes, and you must move on. I think the biggest thing that i felt was that you celebrate those you love after they are gone and get to caught up in bs when they were living.
It was just never very good. It appealed to edgy teenage potheads and does NOT hold up if you're over 25 and/or sober. Especially after seeing more from Kevin Smith himself and more of his writing. Watching it now you realize that's not smart dialogue, it's Kevin Smith sniffing his own farts like seth mcfarlanes writing and people dont actually conversate in lectures and life lessons. The only thing that made the second film bearable is because rosario Dawson makes my pp tingle. And I'm far from a hater. I was a huge fan right up to clerks 2 when I realized Kevin Smith has one shtick and it was already wearing thin that far back
I still want Kevin Smith to finally release *"Batman:Bellicosity"* with Walt Flanagan... I discovered who Kevin Smith was in 2002 thanks to *Green Arrow: The Sound of Violence* , and it's sequels *Batman: Cacophony* (2008/2009) and finally the highly divisive *Batman: The Widening Gyre* (2009/2010)... It's been 13 years of blue balls since I first read the last couple pages of that last one, and the reassurance, every couple years, from Kevin Smith that *Batman: Bellicosity* was on its way, didn't help. Almost as bad as GRRM's TWOW for me...
Clerks 2 is a feel-good movie my dad and I have always watched together. Helped us feel better through hard times. It’s been an important piece for us. This movie ruins it entirely. We were so excited to see it in the theater and it immediately crushed us both. We wanted to see Dante and Becky and their baby. And it’s not even like Rosario couldn’t be in the film, she played her ghost. That’s bad writing, to undo the previous film with such a bombshell. I think if it had progressed and we got to see that he had had his life with her first, then his death might have meant more. The whole, “life sucks and then you die,” shit is not a concept Kevin Smith created, and thus, he did not need to try to teach it to us. I don’t care about whatever epiphany he had. He didn’t die, so he didn’t need to kill the heartfelt emotion the previous film gave us. Fuck Kevin Smith for this. Just have to treat it like the Star Wars sequels, like they aren’t even there.
I have been a huge fan of Kevin Smith since I first saw Clerks on vhs when I was like 11,i watched that movie over and over! And I didn't even know Clerks 3 existed....I guess I just missed it🤷♂️ still love Kevin! Thanks for all the smiles and laughs Kevin.
Okay, so speaking from an old fan of clerks, I still enjoy them. I'm not going to speak about what Kevin's been up to lately with the media but I definitely enjoy his clerks movies and tie-ins! They're all hilarious and relatable. It's a shame 3 didn't hold up especially with classic moments like the wake, the flying car and even chilling with your best bud during a donkey show.
Kevin later had this to say about Clerks 3: "The first Clerks had no “doctrine” - it was just me whining about my job experiences. So even if Clerks III was just me whining (again) about some shit that happened to me IRL, then it follows your theorized “doctrine” of the first Clerks. Also: Randal DID grow up in the third flick; it just came at a high cost. Clerks III wasn’t me whining about my heart attack, it was a reminder to an audience I adore who’ve grown old with me: life is short and never works on your schedule - so start doing that shit you’ve always dreamed of doing, before the choice is no longer yours.❤"
I actually quite liked the movie to be honest 😂 and I'm a die hard fan of the first two movies! But respect where it's due, I enjoyed your video because you're constructive with your criticism and you aren't just spending 20 minutes going "this movie sucked balls" 😎 I suppose the third movie isn't for everyone but I thought it was pretty decent, it's not his best film by a long shot but way better than Yoga Hosers 😂 I like to pretend that movie doesn't exist! I think clerks 3 definitely highlights Brian O'Halloran's skills because he really got me in the feels in the 2nd half, he needs some recognition for that 😎
The movie reminded me of Alien 3. Right from the beginning a character gets killed off and throughout the film, other characters are having heart attacks. WTF! What are the odds that the 2 main characters have heart attacks. There was no need to kill off Dante other than just shock value…I already came across this movie on blu ray at Walmart for $10, I passed on it..
[Spoilers] 🎞 First off, excellent video and critique. Clerks is my favorite film of all-time. I hesitated to watch Clerks III until today. I’m devastated. It was a beautifully emotional ending, yes. But, Dante’s death is not sitting well with me. I shed lots of tears for sure. I’ll have to give it some time before I watch it again. I will say, as many other people have said, Brian’s performance here is extraordinary.
Outside of the happy ending override which is a trope I hate, the worst aspect of Clerks 3 for me was Elias. I found him kind of annoying in part 2 but in this one he was unbearable.
I will always regret not telling Kevin Smith my suggestion for this movie the time I met him. It would have been cool to have Dante go through a mid-life or existential crisis, and have Stephen Root play his dad. It could turn out his dad was dead the whole time even though thats a cliché by now but yeah, this movie is a huge missed opportunity
Clerks 3 ends on such a down note. I mean, that's
what life is, a series of down endings.
Review and reference; well done sir.
All that Yoga Hosers had was a bunch of Bratzis.
I'm good with suspension of disbelief MCU distractions just fine tyvm, not all of us can cope with mortality
It was depressing
Dante did say he preferred movies with a down ending in the first Clerks.
I can think of 37 reason's why the first one is awesome
Hey you, get back here! :)
In a row?
Try not to think of any reasons along the way
37??
Including me?
I laughed when Dante said that Veronica didn't look a day over 37.
37?!
I love the friendship between Dante and Randall in the second movie that showed how The characters mature that prison scene was amazing it gave the characters a perfect sendoff.
Shame about everything else in the movie that had very little to do with their characters, aka, almost every other minute of the movie.
I agree, Clerks 2 was a great send off for this whole universe.
It was a holding cell not
Prison. Lol but your point is correct
@@jwood8769Does it matter
@@Slice2099 it’s a big difference my guy
Plain and simple: Clerks 3 was devoid of heart and humor. However, I will say Brian O'Halloran acted his ass off. Too bad that effort was wasted by this movie.
@Vee_Infusoo Nooooo.
Devoid of heart? That movie was all about heart, pun not intended. I can agree with you about the humor not being a large part of the film like the other 2 series , but heart I can’t agree with. Respectfully, may I ask the age you saw the film at? I am cuz I’m curious cuz I saw it at the age of 48 and as I was approaching my 50’s, the age I am now, my mortality has been something that has been on my mind. My parents passed in their early 60’s so I could be right on track to follow that-at least that is my concern. So seeing this film at an older age and growing up with the characters it hit with me and I did feel the emotion of this film. I wonder if a younger audience doesn’t relate as much to this and just wants to have a good time. I also wonder if I saw this film at a younger age say early 30’s or younger, if I would be bored with it and not get the emotion. Maybe I’m wrong though. It could be that an audience expects certain humor from a Kevin Smith movie and when it doesn’t hit, the movie is a let down. I know when I saw the 4:15 movie I expected a certain humor, dick and fart jokes, crude sex jokes, etc and it never really hit. To me that film was a bit of a let down, but I think I built it up to be something it wasn’t supposed to be.
I just finished watching Clerks 3. I think I'm just going to ignore it in my head Canon. Killing off Becks and his daughter just felt so wrong. Clerks 2 was the perfect ending that brought Dante and Randall's story full circle. Clerks 3 just felt like Kevin wanted to bring his own story full circle but it came at the expense of his characters.
As someone who lost his brother about a year before it came out. It felt real to me.
Clerks 2 was fantastic
The donkey felt like over kill the first time i watched it but i came around to especially after hearing how they got that guy to do his scene with the donkey 😂
Clerks 3 pulled an Alien 3 by killing off a beloved character off screen
Also killing off a main character onscreen.
And the unborn child. Way to cheer us up Silent Bill.
@@TheDrizzle56the family of the main character and any hope of a happy life seconds after finally achieving one after a lifetime of misery. All offscreen in between movies. But both cases are only nightmares that Dante and Ripley are having.
😂🤣 the movie is Clerks... Nobody is beloved 😄 Jay and silent Bobby are the only "beloved" can't be replaced douchebags. I did enjoy the movie Vulgar but I don't know if I did because I was a fan of these actors or if it was actually good 😅
I just found out now that THEY KILLED DANTE, HIS GIRL, AND BABY?!?🤬
Clerks 2 was THE FINAL CLERKS!
They killed his wife and his baby, with plans to enslave him. First mistake....LAST mistake.
He also has a falling out with Randal he never resolves. Why do filmmakers hate happiness?
You perfectly summed up how I felt after watching Clerks 3. And I saw it in the theater surrounded by Kevin Smith fans! (It wasn't one of the Roadshow screening with Kev, it was the Fathom Events one, but still.) Everyone (well, most everyone) seemed to be laughing and enjoying, and I was dumbstruck. Were we watching the same movie? And then, halfway through the flick, it dawned on me what the ending was. With Becky being dead, my mind flashed to the trailer, of Becky and Dante watching a movie in a theater...and she grabs his arm. This ghost, that he has not interacted with physically in this movie, will suddenly be able to touch him. I knew then that Dante was going to die, and I thought that was what ruined the movie for me. But it wasn't the knowing...well, not *just* the knowing, but the whole movie leading up to it.
I've been a Kevin Smith fan since jump. I even used to write for MoviePoopShoot back in the day when it was a real site. But this left me so disappointed. You nailed exactly why. Bravo.
Part of the issue I think is Smith's experience with the heart attack. Clerks cast a wide net. There are many people who have worked at mundane jobs and who have a goofy sense of humor. And though most of us haven't gotten into a fight at work, seen a donkey show, or boinked a dead guy, we have had day dreams that weird while working at our mundane jobs. Clerks was a movie any average Joe or Jane could relate to.
Then comes Smith's heart attack, which I understand was a bit of a life changing moment for him. And that's awesome. It's awesome he can reframe his life and get an almost spiritual experience out of something bad. The problem is, most of us haven't had life changing heart attacks. Most of us aren't preoccupied with loss and death. So, we can't really follow Smith on that journey.
They really dropped the ball with Elias. He was my favorite character in 2
Christy boi eh? Well, boo hoo sorry your feelings were hurt church boi, but real people loved this film and in much the same way I adore both Randal and Supernatural's Bobby. Also I LOVED ELIAS IN THIS!! Talk about finally growing a pair instead of being a Jesus Freaky Hippiy long stockings. I love satanic Elias, because at least now he's not some little Jesus Cock Licking Church boi.
What the fuck are butt thieves?
After being a simp to his girlfriend in the second perhaps Dante could have been that father figure to show him the ups and downs of love and relationship as he lived it in his past. But no.
I was hoping Myra would show up so Randal could see she was real.
Clerks 3 depressed me. Even before the death that was suppose to depress you. Just a depressing tone even during the comedic moments. I wasn’t a big fan of Jay and Silent Bob Reboot, but I enjoyed that much more than Clerks 3.
At least Jay and silent bob 1 &2 didn't make me want to fckngkms without a note or deleting porn from hardrive
@@seewhativescene thats for reminding me; I really need to do that
I also say reboot was better then 3
This video is why I stopped at Clerks 2 - I just couldn’t watch these characters and films that meant so much to me, continue to degrade. You don’t come of age as a film geek in Jersey during the late 90 without falling in love with Kevin Smith. Clerks meant so much to me precisely because I wished I’d made my own Clerks. That story behind the movie was an integral piece of enjoying the movie. Clerks 2 was a good send off to the entire universe. Every thing after just made me sad. Maybe this film works better 10 years ago, but all those actors look way too old for this stuff. And we as his primary audience have grown up. Unfortunately Kevin didn’t.
Clerks 3 has the best acting out of all of them, it is a phenomenal showcase of how far they have grown. Give it a try, preferably with some friends then make up your own mind. You might still agree with him or you might agree with me that it’s one of his top movies. It’s definitely not better than Dogma in my mind but I put it in my top 3 for Kevin Smith
As far as I’m concerned, it ended with 2. The ending was a perfect arc to end on.
I still want Kevin Smith to finally release *"Batman:Bellicosity"* with Walt Flanagan... I discovered who Kevin Smith was in 2002 thanks to *Green Arrow: The Sound of Violence* , and it's sequels *Batman: Cacophony* (2008/2009) and finally the highly divisive *Batman: The Widening Gyre* (2009/2010)...
It's been 13 years of blue balls since I first read the last couple pages of that last one, and the reassurance, every couple years, from Kevin Smith that *Batman: Bellicosity* was on its way, didn't help.
Almost as bad as GRRM's TWOW for me...
Kevin did grow up...and he sold out over it.
@@sklba632 you mean he did what was good for him. You people are so pathetic with that sellout bs
So glad someone agrees with me, I loved the first 2 Clerks but 3 just didn't do it for me.
Thank you for articulating why this Clerks 3 upset me so much! I don’t understand the overwhelmingly positive reviews it’s getting. Especially when the essential message of the movie is, “Oh you’re depressed and lonely? Maybe you’ll be happier if you died”.
Glad to see I'm not the only one who was disappointed by the 3rd movie. Most of my friends seemed to love it but I personally did not care for it. You pretty much hit the nail on the head with this video. I feel the same way you do.
I watched it with my friend group the other week. We went into it hyped and ready. Once the film ended, we were silent. It was very poorly received by all.
@@davidk.1917 NO, maybe they are shock because is so real.
@mayotango1317 because that's what the other Kevin Smith films are about.....realism LOL. Make a separate movie if you want a drama.
@@amunago080 Clerks 2 realism? No that's some nonsense right there.
I personally love this movie cause life is not far and your happy ending sometimes doesn’t happen and the worst part is when u think u have it figured out and something take all of it always it’s hard to keep going and I just relate to this movie and I wish I didn’t understand it to well
I agree Becky should’ve stayed alive, but I saw Kevin talking about it saying Rosario Dawson is too expensive now to be a leading actress in the movie
As it should, she was discovered on the block in lower Manhattan at like 14 for that one movie Kids
Rosario was also working on her Star Wars spinoff show at the time as well, so she was just hard to get. But she loves the character of becky so im glad she did come back
She is? I haven’t heard her name in like 12 years
Why kill her off in a pointless way and basically erase the ending of Clerks 2? Just have her home with the kids and that could easily explain why we don't see her that much.
They did have her on the poster and made it seem like she was going to be a major character
I deleted clerks 3 from my memory after watching it at the plane back from my holiday vacations. It was so depressing that my brain simply deleted it from my cache memory.
Kevin smith's last good movie was Jay and silent Bob strike back. Clerks 2 had funny moments, but Kevin lost it once he started sucking up to Hollywood in the early 2000's. Nowadays he just makes lame movies that cater to Hollywood and something to give his wife and daughter work,because they aren't going to find it anywhere else.
I'm so glad you put out this video because I completely forgot the movie had even existed and hadn't watched it yet and now I'm just not going to. So thank you because you saved me from wasting my time
Clerks 3 is in my top 3 favorite Kevin Smith movies. Go watch Dan Murrels thoughts on Clerks 3 before you make up your mind.
A bit harsh and shortsighted to make your decision off of one person. Republican and Anti-Vaxxer by any chance?
???????@@nettack?????????these videos and comments aren't meant for children especially political propagandists
You must be one of those white libs that Malcolm warned people to avoid🚩🚩@@nettack you don't speak for all Democrats Libby soysis stop being weird
@@PatrickPaul1203 I guess I could give it a chance but I already saw James Bond die. I don't really want to see Dante die. The James Bond thing got to me I'm not sure I'm ready to deal with that. Still love Smith but IDK
Dante deserved better.
I like the original ending with Dante being shot. Not that I didn't like the character, but for a movie on its own, without the legacy that came after it, it was a perfect, brutally ironic ending. It was definitely art.
I was worried Clerks III would not top the ending to Clerks II. I was prepared for the plot to have some depressing midlife crisis since both Dante and Randal are now in their late 40s. However, I was not prepared for how depressing and just bad Clerks III would be. I completely agree with your criticism.
On my way home from the theater, I thought of an alternative story plot that would have still kept the essence of what Kevin Smith was trying to do as a tribute to his first movie while making a point about mortality.
Dante still loses his wife BUT he has a daughter. The daughter grows up with Dante and "Uncle" Randal. Randal still has a heart attack, thinks he has wasted his life and decides to make a movie. However, during the process he realizes he does have meaning and a legacy. His relationship with Dante's daughter and being part of that family. Dante still has a heart attack and dies. However, when he is with his wife watching the movie, he realizes his daughter will be fine with Randal still there. The movie ends with Randal and Dante's daughter at the funeral realizing Dante help made them who they are while also understanding they have each other as family. The movie ends similar to Jay and Silent Bob Reboot. That families come in many different shapes and sizes, but family is what gives meaning to life.
Also take out the weird Santanic Elijah plot. It was funny for a couple minutes but it was a joke that went on too too long.
Yeah, I had a similar thought when watching it. ‘Okay so you can’t get Rosario back, but wouldn’t it give Dante more of a drive in the film if he was looking after a kid?’ Maybe the kid worked shifts there, maybe Dante feels Randall is a bad influence? Maybe the heart attack inspires Dante’s kid to make something of themselves. And then you’ve opened up a whole new opportunity for new characters and an actual plot. Rather than us all having to rewatch Clerks being made in a very meta way by a bunch of 50 year olds.
I think the unspoken thing here is that Smith became Indie-famous at a very early age. His life experience is very different to all of ours. That’s not a bad thing, but all this latest stuff feels so maudlin and backward, it’s just someone trying to catch something that’s never coming back. Or at my most cynical, someone milking their cult audience to pay the mortgage.
I like it.
I had a heart attack a year before Kevin Smith had his. When he decided he was going to make a movie about the experience and what lies after survival I was thankful. Lots of my friends died in their 40s of heart attack. I and Smith survived the big one. I was expecting a movie about life going forward and doing the things we dreamed of doing our youth. Not going back to our 20s which isn’t possible. I’m sad for this movie. Killing of Rebecca was stupid. Then they kill Dante off? Why? It should have been serious but funny. To bad he didn’t ask advice from Mel Brooks.
It's the end of clerks, it's supposed to be a final thing. Or did you really want to continue untill all actors are behind strollers? His films always got a lot of flack thus I'm more inclined to give him the benefit of doubt. To me the movie is fine but I get people expected more.
@@Burtlocker Contrary to popular belief life doesn’t end at age 50. Yes he should have grown old to see his kids and grandkids grown up. People should enjoy the fruit of their labor into old age. They earned it.
@@map3384 So you do agree? Although you seem to care more about the characters in the film then the people acting in real life.
@@Burtlocker They’re actors playing a part. What does it matter to them?
@@map3384 a lot if you know the backstories of these people and realize half of them aren't actors at all.
Thank you vee, for saying what needed to be said!
The scene in the graveyard contradicts the ending and Dante’s conclusion. It implies that he should want to move on and then he just doesn’t? Kinda strange
The ending of Clerks 2 is kinda sad, even Dante feel regret.
it's just c_uck f_etish crap. it doesn't have any meaning beyond that.
Why couldn't Dante just find some happiness man geez.
You can lead a guy to a donkey sex show, but you can't teach him how to hold onto Rosario Dawson
Dude literally has a heart-attack bitching about his life. Depressing.
Exactly. That’s what I thought.
If Kevin Smith remade Clerks III I would be very happy with that. I watched Clerks III once on Blu-Ray. I put the disk in a fire and watched it melt immediately after.
YOU ARE SO CORRECT!! Sadly, though, Kevin Smith will never see it this way because too many of his paying "fans" have told the emperor they love his new clothes. I wish he would return to writing films like Red State & Tusk. I was happy with that career turn. Who knew he'd take that long back slide into rehashing his previous efforts? For a man who has been writing films for 30 years, his last few outings feel like they were written by an amateur!!
Clerks 3, Godfather 3, and Highlander 2 don't exist in my universe.
I'd like to see what the characters from Mallrats are doing instead. He should have made that sequel
Brody owns a comic book store at the mall where Mallrats takes place
Dogma 2: The Endogening
I've been hearing about a 2nd Mallrats forever. I shot the breeze w Jeremy London at a comic convention one time and asked him about it. Dude even showed me a text on his phone, supposedly from Kevin about working on getting it going. This was 2014-15ish.
All that said, he was decent to talk to, outside that question I had for him we just chatted about random stuff.
To be fair. Highlander 2 doesn’t exist in its own universe.
As crazy as it may sound, I think the only solution to this is another one. Clerks 3.5, where it's revealed that the entirety of Clerks 3 was a bad movie script written by Randall.
That is a horrible idea.
They could just retcon the ending with an alternate ending where after the dante becky scene in the theater the camera pans out to darkness
(then it pans out from randall's eyes.)
Randall: so that's my movie idea.
Pretty fuckin sweet right?
Dante: you kill me in your movie?!?
What am i, some hidious fucking chud?
Becky: really weak graeves.
Dante& becky's kid:
Fuck you uncle randall.
(Fade to black)
That's how i would have ended it😂
@@chuckymunsterstudios not as bad as what actually was released.
I cried at the end of Clerks 3, not because Dante died but because it ruined the original, and the sequel for me. I’ve literally had to take a couple months off of not watching or listening to anything Kevin Smith related just so I can remember the original Clerks and love it again for what it was and what it meant to me, I’m just going to pretend this third movie never happened (and I really wish every time I went on TH-cam I didn’t keep seeing these reviews of the movie reminding me of its existence)…
They made the third movie so sad for no reason
I agree, I thought they killed off Becky because Rosario Dawson wasn't going to be in it, but she had scenes 💀 I get the heart attack stuff, but it seems a bit pointless to kill off his family
@@tyronegorman8949 rosario was one of the reasons why the second movie was so popular lol. no reason why they essentially wrote her out. especially the way they did
I totally agree with this video. I really had to force myself to get to the end of clerks 3. The first 2 movies are classic, and kevin dropped a big steaming stinker for #3.
I’ll agree, Clerks and clerks 2 are perfect
Clerks 3 wants to be the original and can’t do that
I really enjoyed Clerks III. I saw it at 48 years old, and for me it seemed like these characters grew up with me. I loved the ending and teared up. It may not have been as funny or raunchy as the other 2 but it was more mature, and so was I at the time of seeing. I laughed at some of the jokes, but as I get older and think about my own mortality and those around me, this movie hit a sweet spot in my heart. I still cannot watch this movie without tearing up at the end. I know in the second film Randal said there is only one trilogy, but damn it there are always room for more trilogies and this one is one of those films. Clerks did t die on 3, though a character I loved did. Now if we want to talk about a Kevin Smith film without humor we should talk about the 4:15 movie. It was fine but I was expecting more raunchy humor.
i lost respect for kevin smith with all that he-man stuff. he was awesome, but now he's pretty tame. i don't know, it's almost like as if almost dying changes you. 🤷♂️
great video though 👍
I seem to be in the minority of people that actually liked Mallrats.
Mallrats is the best jay and Silent Bob ever
Mallrats is awesome totally unappreciated
Nah, most people love Mallrats. It’s a classic!
Mallrats is awesome. What are you talking about?
Mallrats is good, but it's wedged between some other classics.
I liked the movie because it was kind of a natural progression from the first two. Clerks 2 had an aura of melancholy to it because there was this theme of life moving on, getting old and feeling like your life was going nowhere, yet I still laughed uproariously throughout, whereas here it gets really morbid and deals with death and not taking your life for granted, which makes for a good story, but unfortunately the movie lacked the laughs even if it had the substance. Dante losing his wife and daughter pretty much immediately after the events of Clerks 2 felt like what they did with Alien 3 and Terminator: Dark Fate.
The ending was an emotional gut punch, and I think it was Smiths best film since Zack and Miri, but it was probably the most depressing comedy I've ever seen, and considering the first two were uproariously funny, this felt a tad out of place, even if it did feel like a natural progression.
It was not the natural progression for Randal to be a dick to his best friend while being the only constant in Dante's life. The movie didn't need a Happy Ending and Dante could have still died. However, he didn't need to end with realizing he wasted his life with a dick of a friend. You can have a sad depressing ending that is just written better. Clerks 3 was not..
@@MrBlink1980 I believe the point in that was that Randal, after his heart attack, had this newfound drive in life and became so focussed on making the movie, he took his friendship with Dante for granted. But then when Dante suffered a heart attack himself, it knocked sense into him.
The film really is about how you can take your loved ones and your health for granted, kinda like how a married couple sometimes do.
Yes, Randal did come across as a bit self centred and micromanaging when it came to directing the movie, but I'd put that down to his drive to make the movie at the expense of everything else, including Dantes feelings. Whether that makes you root for the character is very debateable, but that's how I interpreted it.
Clerks 3 didn't work at all because Kevin Smith went full Hollywood.
He lost every and all touch with the regular person, he's been making movies of this quality for a while like Yoga Hosers and up.
He caters to his audience. Not one of his movies since Cop Out has been anything remotely Hollywood. Many were four walled. He knows what kind of movies he wants to make and his fanbase appreciates and adjusts his budget accordingly.
@@nettack LOL, most of his fanbase has disliked his movies in more recent years unless you're a blinded fanboy with no standards.
Absolutely.
I really don’t think that has anything to do with it. This is just a creatively bankrupt and misjudged movie.
@@IoiniEverson
He-Man was made to sell toys. It was always some corporate BS.
I don't get it. Clerks 2 had such a satisfying ending, where everyone grew up and found their place and then Clerks 3 has the murder OF A MOTHER AND CHILD! Did we get a name for the kid? Why weren't they there to see their dad as he died? Even if she was less than a year old she could have been in her mom's arms. Loving your kids more than your own life only comes after a year I guess?
Grace and she died while Becky was still pregnant with her I believe.
Being that Kevin has said that he sort of sees himself in Dante. I really feel like the whole point of this movie,was tell his audience something. That something was that he hates his oldself, and hates the people who like that guy, so much that he killed him off. Still cried like a child at the ending, it came out on my birthday and am closer to 30 than 20.
I cried 4 times
Oh wow. I had no idea that Clerks 3 existed. I think that I will just pretend that it doesn't from now on.
A bit harsh and shortsighted to make your decision off of one person. Republican and Anti-Vaxxer by any chance?
@@nettack Uhh...what?
@@nettack This is the gayest comment I’ve ever read
Skip it and be happy with Clerks 2.
I enjoyed it enough (you have to take Kevin Smith with a pinch of salt these days) but it felt like a massive waste of an opportinity.
Kevin Smith movies died awhile after Kevin Smith became successful. His original stuff was great because Kevin was in touch with the everyman. But success have removed him from the everyman, and now he's so far removed that he can't resonate with us anymore.
I laughed once at the "god holy ghosted me" line.
Not enough comedy for a comedy
It got a couple little chuckles and smiles out of me. The two biggest problems, I think, are that A) there’s simply not enough comedy in the movie to begin with (it’s more of a tone deaf drama), so coupled with the insanely dark and depressing story directions, the movie just feels largely humorless, and B) Kevin Smith has apparently reached a point where he equates “cute” with comedy. You can see it in his performance as Silent Bob now and in a lot of the cornier humor that crops up more and more in his movies. He’s not telling jokes or writing funny lines of dialogue anymore, he’s just making everything light and cutesy and using that as his humor substitute a lot of the time.
Also, a lot of the dialogue is just bad, questionable, or groan worthy. There were also zero Clerks-style, stop-and-talk conversations sprinkled with funny observations. Not one. That’s like the entire hook of a Clerks movie, and even Clerks II attempted it in places. There’s also like one lame running gag about people thinking Randal’s movie is an “adult film” that just feels lazily dropped in places. There’s no funny timing with it like there was with the shoe polish gag in the first movie or anything. So all in all, not a very good comedy film to say the least.
Processed, manufactured, and overall fake is what Kevin Smith is now.
Kevin and I are about the same age. The slacker era. At the time he was making his movie I was making friends with the person for Middletown NJ. So I felt a little extra connected to the whole thing.
Also at that time I was working in a video store. A little mom and pop place. With the pron in the back.
I love that Kevin Smith puts his whole soul into a project. He's very revealing and personal. I always admired that.
To continue the parallel, I also had a heart attack. I also had to change my life because of it. He's better at losing weight than I am.
I don't think Kevin will ever be the filmmaker that Spielberg or Lucas became. And that's okay. His projects are very accessible to the everyday person.
Keep making them I'll keep watching them.
Although it was released on September 13, 2022 I didn't finally cave in and watch Clerk III until a couple of weeks before Christmas. Despite the fact that I still had some hope that Kevin Smith could pull it off, it was just as bad as any of his last 3-4 films. I mean... the 'die had been cast' and was beginning to rear it's head somewhat in "Jersey Girl" and "Zack & Miri" but now Kevin Smith's outings in the directorial chair strangely resemble that of a punch drunk fighter, entering the ring to face yet another consecutive defeat. It's hard to watch!
I loved clerks 1 & 2, but 3 was a big disappointment. It was really depressing and not fun to watch.
Kevin Smith actually became worse when he started smoking weed. I prefer to pretend that Clerks III never happened, I'll stick with the animated series.
I felt like I was watching a "How to Prevent Heart Attacks" PSA, I get it, but dammit, Dante didn't deserve all that.
I believe he's still doing a Mallbrats movie, and I'm not looking forward to watching Brodie get assassinated by Zack Snyder.
Smoking weed doesn't make someone cool or uncool: he got older(it sucks,don't recommend), had a kid, became wealthy and deathly ill
@@seewhativescene I would argue that it is less that he aged, and more that he sold out.
@@seewhativescene Oh don't get me wrong, I would HATE to blame weed but....there's a correlation.
The minute Seth Rogan handed Kev his first joint, his work has suffered.
I don't think he sold out. It was always about elevating himself, we just bought into his geek story of being one of us when really he was just using us because we were the only group that would listen.
@@gottfriedosterbach3907Now THAT is the best answer.
I’m a massive legacy Kevin Smith fan and follow everything he does and I completely agree, Clerks 3 was a MASSIVE misfire.
Yeah sort of the same boat. I really didn't like clerks 3 at all. I don't even think I laughed once and fast forwarded through a lot of it. I bought a copy of it just to support Kevin but this one was just trash. Still a KS fan and probably always will be but he was never able to surpass the original clerks and that is fine. He did more than I ever did.
Clerks is not a comedy. Is real life.
the fact that this is even a question just goes to show how truly devoid of taste people are
So when I was in middle school I first seen clerks 2 which was the first clerks movie I saw and I loved it. When I got older I was able to watch clerks 1 which was good but I always loved clerks 2 a little more. Today I was about to rewatch it on this movie app and I saw clerks 3 and I was shocked because I didn’t even know it existed. Being the fan I am of course I watched it. Everything you said in this video is what I was thinking the whole time watching this Movie. What a disaster. I honestly don’t ever want to watch clerks 3 ever again
I watched clerks 1 and 2.
And mallrats and Jay and silent bob strike back. And dogma.
But never clerks 3 and it looks like I've dodged a bullet with clerks 3.
Kevin Smith was a very lucky, mediocre talent and that became very clear in about 1995. The problem was he was popular with the 90s Gen X audience.
But that was three generations ago. Now all he does is cry.
I say this as a former huge fan, who listened to hundreds of hours of podcasts over many years and seeing his movies in empty cinemas also for many years.
This is relevant because I have a clear memory of when he was making Zack amd Miri, on the podcast he talked about Clerks 3 and he would make it when he has a good idea where to take the characters because currently (and I quote) "The only thing I can think of was them making a movie in the QuickStop, so it shows I dont know where to take them!" And then about 15 years later: this.
Wow. I'm glad someone said it!
This is actually even harsher than I would have put it, but no lies detected. I would have said, he's someone who has severely overreached his talent, and has become decreasingly aware or even remotely likeable about it.
Jay and silent bob are stupid characters that only work in small doses. A third rate Cheech and Chong or Bill and Ted, if they were real I would kick the shit out of them. They are fucking clown shoes!
GREAT! Clerks is a Kevin Smith movie I haven't seen. Now I'm intrigued.
If you like George Lucas films you might like one of his early works titled “ Star Wars”
This is the first time I've even heard about Clerks 3. I used to watch in anticipation for a Kevin Smith movie. Now the most entertainment I get is cringing from him crying about EVERYTHING. Dude is a joke
I thought the movie sucked pretty hard but I LOVED the ending. It was beautiful in every way.
This guy quickly became my favorite TH-camr
least favourite*
The fact that your voice sounds more than a little bit like Randall makes this whole video so much funnier
Clerks should have ended at 2. Just as Devils Rejects ended on a good note, but Rob Zombie had to ruin it and make a senselese 3rd film.
Yea third one was dumb for sure
Now that Kevin Smith has stopped smoking weed. I think he should just try to remake Clerks III, only making it good. The only good part of C3 was the end when Dante dies, and that genuinely made me fucking cry. Please consider a remake Mr. Smith.
He’s still a libtard tho
Great video as I agree with you 100%. Only point I make that you didnt is that KS already did C3 when he did Zack and Miri. I had such high hopes after C2. But the VA is dead, over, done.
Probably best one doesn't make a "tribute" to their own work. Especially decades afterward when everyone has grown into significantly less cool people than they were. Not to mention the whole Kevins alienation of more than half own fan base.
I feel like a 3rd movie wouldn't have worked no matter how you created it. Clerks 1 stands on its own, and 2 was like a sweet compliment cherry on top. 3 is overkill. The biggest issue here is that Kevin Smith either simply sold out to the Hollywood machine, got too old to be an edgy director, or both. Watching the film, it felt cheap. Felt like a straight-to-streaming movie with Hallmark-level cinematography, and wondered if Smith even REMEMBERED how to direct a film, and almost every actor has gotten TOO OLD to keep that youthful edge this franchise always required and needs to thrive.
Weird robotic camera angles, wooden acting, extremely dry jokes, useless characters with ZERO reason to exist (i.e. angry Black woman with her husband and daughter supervising Randal and Dante's film for her daughter's college class, who felt like she was just there so Kevin can have some non-White people incorporated, then ironically and cluelessly going for the "Angry Black Woman" stereotype no less, smh...). Kevin Smith used to push the boundaries of political correctness and status quo, but here it's like he's afraid to say ANYTHING controversial, which tells me he was egg shell walking so he wouldn't upset the whacko basement dwellers on Twitter. Well, he succeeded on that as NOBODY has uttered a peep about this film very soon after its release. The Jay and Silent Bob reboot's mediocrity should have told us this disappointment was coming. In a world where there is SO MUCH to bash, from overreaching governments, to moronic street blocking protesters, to whining Twitter twits, to an oversaturation of superhero bullsh*t, to gender delusional screaming extremist Leftoids, to language and online censorship gone bonkers, to social media obsession, to even freaking Trump as former president, etc etc etc Smith not only doesn't even mention it, he purposefully runs far far away from it, leaving us baffled.
I honestly think Smith needs to just hang it up and retire. I don't forsee ANY good film coming from him at all anymore.
You nailed what happens a lot in comedy movie sequels is they shift the focus of the first main character to the "best friend" or some other supporting character when I don't think it ever truly has worked out before. For example the American Pie sequels became more about Stifler and the spin offs started being just more about Stifler's family and it just becomes too much of that character 😆
And Jim’s dad for some reason had to be in them.
🥸Jim's dad cursed us up schitscreek, thanks a lot Eugene @@markdenton3141
Yeah that's called "milking a franchise." Cross reference "Walking Dead."
And it's actually pretty remarkable that there was actually a Stifler spinoff universe. I mean it's on par with Corey Feldman direct to video movies, but he really made a career out of MeToo, one of the last.
Hot tub time machine 2 did that too. Fucking mess of a film
Wasn’t Rosario Dawson’s character pregnant and she Just Dies
I’m glad I didn’t waste time watching it it don’t know how you sat through 4 viewings of dumpster fire
I’m also sick of him shoving his untalented daughter into everyone’s projects she ruins everything she’s in
Personally, I would say Clerks died with Clerks 2. Don't get me wrong, Clerks 2 is a good movie, it's very funny, and as you said, it retains the heart of the original. However, my observation of it was that: Clerks equals mid-20s slackers, aren't they adorable. When will they get their lives together?
Clerks 2 equals late 30's/early 40's slackers, and that's just kinda sad. I remember the part about Randall saying he buttfucks high-school girls and I was thinking, that that's just creepy and gross. How fucked up is New Jersey that high-school girls want to have sex with shlubby middle aged losers? Also, while the dialog is funny, there's just something ridiculous about watching middle-aged guys talking and behaving exactly the way they did 20 years ago.
Nevertheless, Clerks 2 does end on a high note and progresses the characters, so while it starts off fairly pathetic, it at least ends with Dante and Randall finally growing up.
Lastly there's no way around it, these guys are fucking old and they look fucking old. Yeah, they're not "get off my lawn old," but damn they got grey hair, turkey neck, jowls, etc. and if watching 40 year old guys behave like 22 year Olds was ridiculous, then watching 55 year olds do it would be outright pathetic. That's why I plan on passing on Clerks 3, I'd rather have Dante and Randall go out on a high note with their dignity still intact.
In Clerks 2 they're 33
@Shep The actors were 34 and 35 at the time of filming, but they looked closer to 40 than 30. Kinda like how now they look closer to 60 than 50.
I went to see this with my gf when it came to our local theatre (in NJ). We have different levels of love for Clerks, but she adores it and went in very excited. She left crying. And I can't say I enjoyed myself either
I actually do think this was a well made movie that had good performances, but that's on a technical level. Story wise, it's the worst of Kevin Smith's failings. One, he keeps running back to View Askew-niverse because most of his other projects aren't successful and he keep trying to milk nostalgia and past praise.
Two, he keeps undoing the hope of every Clerks ending. The first one ends with Dante going to change his life and then you find out he didn't. Then you think he's gonna run a business with a family but no, that gets taken away too.
And finally this movie exemplifies both because he basically remakes Clerks with the ending he originally wanted, even though it makes the series end on the shittiest of notes. And then he begs his fans to see it because of nostalgia. I think it says a lot that he couldn't get a mainstream release of this; for all the skill he had, Kevin Smith just doesn't seem to bring them in any more. For me, this all ends with Clerks 2 and Jay and Silent Bob reboot (which for all it's flaws, does have more humor and heart then this).
Finally, an excellent review!
The day it died is when Kevin smith kept posting images of himself crying over and over, since that is funnier than anything in any of his movies
You either die a hero or live long enough to become the soyboy, crybaby, He-Man ruining, wussy, childhood destroying, Hollywood Cuck Villain.
Prime Kevin Smith died in 2006 with clerks to his last good movie was Zach and Marie made a porno
I'm going to say "The Walrus" was a so good it's bad movie. Kevin Smith's new soy boy self seems sus. He diddled someone inappropriately at some point, that's how Hollywood soy boys are made.
@@Slice2099 can confirm, I was Jay's fluffer between takes
@anonconspicuous6910 well he almost died and now he is a stoner where he wasn't when he made the stoner movies go figure
I actually found Clerks III to be worth watching, but only worth watching once, which puts it in stark contrast to most other Kevin Smith movies which I've rewatched countless times. I completely agree that Mallrats doesn't need to get the same treatment.
i totally agree, i watched it the day it came out and i haven’t had the urge to revisit it again.
I appreciated this movie from a nostalgia perspective because I’m a really big fan of the first two movies and the rest of the universe but unfortunately I can rewatch those movies. I have no interest in re-watching this movie.
I just watched clerks three yesterday. Obviously, I think the first one is the best, the second one I find is actually pretty brilliant and pretty good and I like the ending of the second one but the third one just felt like Kevin Smith ran out of ideas so he thought having the characters go out and shoot the first movie would be compelling enough. I understood the first heart attack for Randall, but I thought the second heart attack for Donte was a little bit pointless. I think he could’ve come up with another way to get those messages across instead of having one of the characters die off. I just feel like Kevin Smith really didn’t know what he wanted to do with the third film, which is a shame. I was really hoping the third one would be a lot better. 🙏🏻
It would've been interesting if Dante and Becky were pretty happy with kids. Randall has a heart attack, it finally hits him that he's a 50 year old man with nothing and he doesn't just want to be a Clerk in NJ for the rest of his life. There was a story here but Kevin dropped the ball.
I grew up with the first film and it may be the one movie I've watched more than any other. I vehemently *hated* the idea of a second film at the time but I went to see it in a theater, by myself, and was happily shocked how heartfelt, hilarious, and worthwhile it turned out to be. The jailhouse scene in the third act is some of Kevin's strongest material he's ever written and filmed. I never thought Jeff Anderson would go for a third film because he barely did Clerks II and the whole audit situation between Kevin's naivety and Weinstein grifting the residuals understandably pissed off Anderson and Mosier. When Kevin officially announced it, I grimaced because as much as I grew up loving Kevin, even I recognize his material has not been up to par for like ten years - even though I do enjoy Tusk for its bizarre exploitation novelty and Michael Parks' performance. Jay and Bob Reboot wasn't nearly as bad as I imagined it would be but it's still not good, and Kevin's present day films have this odd look and feel like the whole production wrapped within a work week. Unfortunately, I watched Clerks III and I hated it. It wasn't funny. It looked cheap which is wholly weird to say about a Clerks movie, I know, but it lacked passion and indie charm. I could not stand the choice with Dawson's character as a Force ghost who pops in and out. The plot didn't even make sense. Then Dante dies in a hospital bed. Nevermind the whole NFT nonsense... it's just bad. I'm genuinely shocked Anderson agreed to do this script and it's no shade on any of the actors, they did a great job, but the screenplay and direction is very weak and kind of embarrassing compared to the previous Clerks films. I'm going to live the rest of my life firmly believing the story of Dante and Randal ended with Clerks II, thank you very much.
I both enjoyed and hated the movie. To have Becky and the unborn baby killed off like that? Gah. Didn't like that choice at all. However, I can imagine someone being in a slump for a long time after something like that.
Not sure Becky was a force ghost and not just Dante's imagination tho.
The ending was sad. Sad good imo, but sad none the less, but while I thought it was good, it's part of what I hated about it. Kill off Dante? Why?! Dante never really getting a happy ending...yeah...that's life I guess. :/
Real life is depressing and with sad endings, you feel alone as a adult.
@@mayotango1317
Clerks III isn’t real life. It’s a movie. People all inevitably experience hard losses and grapple with their own mortality. It’s just a part of life. Death is always ubiquitous. So why does a movie - a *comedy,* no less - need to kill off characters people have been endeared to for literally decades just to elicit an emotion and make the audience feel sad about death? What was the point? If it’s really just to say “life sucks and death happens”, that’s a pretty dour and superficial message that doesn’t need to be offered to anyone who is alive and cognizant.
@@BareBandSubscription Maybe you need to watch the first movie.
@@mayotango1317
I’ve been watching the first movie since I was 13 and I’m turning 30 this year. I’ve seen it at least a hundred times by now and it’s legitimately one of my favorite movies hands down. I adore it. What’s your point?
Clerks died when the Kevin Smith who said music numbers in movies full of Hollywood friends is bad filmmaking, went and did that with his Clerks characters....because money.
I couldn’t agree more! Loved clerks and clerks 2 is one of my all time favorite films but I just couldn’t get into 3. It seems like my at one time favorite director due to his great dialogue and character development has completely forgotten how to due those 2 things that made him great in the first place?!? It would be like Larry Holmes forgetting how to throw a jab! Clerks 2 was amazing it told a story that so many of us can understand but his last 2 films are just so meta it’s downright heartbreaking.
Honestly as someone who lost his brother about a year before that movie came out. I actually found Clerks 3 really therapeutic for me. I understand why people don’t like it though. Honestly though. The 430 movie is the best movie he’s made in years. Didn’t think I’d be saying that.
After watching a few diff reviews of clerks 3 I refuse to watch it ever have my own head cannon I will follow
Enjoyed this video a lot. I'm a big fan of Kevin Smith, but his last few movies have been hit or miss. Hope he bounces back with his next movie. Also glad you're still uploading, i enjoy your videos a lot.
He Better... or else he's done
silent bob and jake strike back was the first film of the series i watched and know about. and then i found out it was a spin-off of clerks. ive been watching all the films of the franchise every decade when they come out, but i keep forgetting who's who exept for silent bob and jake.
If they had to make a third movie this was actually a great setup. It could’ve lead to a loving tribute to independent filmmaking, how that’s changed over the years and the profound impact making such a film could have on a person’s life. It was basically the setup for the ultimate thank you to Kevin Smith’s fans. Instead it just needlessly crapped on everything fans could’ve expected from this movie and only paid tribute to the series in the laziest ways possible.
Oddly, the way the first movie is described here in the first two minutes might have sounded more geared to 2023, with the weirdness and oddity. Problem is that it's no longer 1994. Indie film makers get to do this one time. Anything beyond that, and you're venturing down the path of self-parody. Smith got away with it in the sequel, because it ties things together in a semi-dramatic way. To me, that's where the story ended.
I had zero desire to see the third installment because I knew part two was straddling that line close enough for me. The trailer alone felt like a waste of time. It also didn't help that so many years passed between each one. Smith clearly felt he had to play to younger audiences in both sequels, and in C3 it became outright pandering and a very clumsy reach. If I had to compare it to something, the first thing that comes to mind is Stephen Colbert. Brilliant satire/parody followed up by unoriginal virtue signaling to a pre-determined demographic that can only live ironically in past successes. The street cred brought people in, the comeback found people vicariously living in the past.
I smiled, laughed and cried. Everything dies.
I agree with alot of what is said in this video. However it provided the closure i wanted. I think that part of Clerks 3 shows us that lifeisnt always hockey games on roofs and friends aren't always perfect . Life sucks sometimes, and you must move on. I think the biggest thing that i felt was that you celebrate those you love after they are gone and get to caught up in bs when they were living.
It was just never very good. It appealed to edgy teenage potheads and does NOT hold up if you're over 25 and/or sober. Especially after seeing more from Kevin Smith himself and more of his writing. Watching it now you realize that's not smart dialogue, it's Kevin Smith sniffing his own farts like seth mcfarlanes writing and people dont actually conversate in lectures and life lessons. The only thing that made the second film bearable is because rosario Dawson makes my pp tingle.
And I'm far from a hater. I was a huge fan right up to clerks 2 when I realized Kevin Smith has one shtick and it was already wearing thin that far back
Clerks 2 and Jay & Silent Bob Strike Back are Smith's best films. Lots of other notable entries but Clerks 3 just wasn't it.
I still want Kevin Smith to finally release *"Batman:Bellicosity"* with Walt Flanagan... I discovered who Kevin Smith was in 2002 thanks to *Green Arrow: The Sound of Violence* , and it's sequels *Batman: Cacophony* (2008/2009) and finally the highly divisive *Batman: The Widening Gyre* (2009/2010)...
It's been 13 years of blue balls since I first read the last couple pages of that last one, and the reassurance, every couple years, from Kevin Smith that *Batman: Bellicosity* was on its way, didn't help.
Almost as bad as GRRM's TWOW for me...
Thankyou for such a thorough and honest review
Disingenuous terrible inaccurate review.
Kevin Smith has fans like zelda has fans.
Clerks 2 is a feel-good movie my dad and I have always watched together. Helped us feel better through hard times. It’s been an important piece for us. This movie ruins it entirely. We were so excited to see it in the theater and it immediately crushed us both. We wanted to see Dante and Becky and their baby. And it’s not even like Rosario couldn’t be in the film, she played her ghost. That’s bad writing, to undo the previous film with such a bombshell. I think if it had progressed and we got to see that he had had his life with her first, then his death might have meant more. The whole, “life sucks and then you die,” shit is not a concept Kevin Smith created, and thus, he did not need to try to teach it to us. I don’t care about whatever epiphany he had. He didn’t die, so he didn’t need to kill the heartfelt emotion the previous film gave us. Fuck Kevin Smith for this. Just have to treat it like the Star Wars sequels, like they aren’t even there.
I have been a huge fan of Kevin Smith since I first saw Clerks on vhs when I was like 11,i watched that movie over and over! And I didn't even know Clerks 3 existed....I guess I just missed it🤷♂️ still love Kevin! Thanks for all the smiles and laughs Kevin.
Okay, so speaking from an old fan of clerks, I still enjoy them. I'm not going to speak about what Kevin's been up to lately with the media but I definitely enjoy his clerks movies and tie-ins! They're all hilarious and relatable. It's a shame 3 didn't hold up especially with classic moments like the wake, the flying car and even chilling with your best bud during a donkey show.
Kevin later had this to say about Clerks 3: "The first Clerks had no “doctrine” -
it was just me whining about my job experiences. So even if Clerks III was just me whining (again) about some shit that happened to me IRL, then it follows your theorized “doctrine” of the first Clerks.
Also: Randal DID grow up in the third flick; it just came at a high cost.
Clerks III wasn’t me whining about my heart attack, it was a reminder to an audience I adore who’ve grown old with me: life is short and never works on your schedule - so start doing that shit you’ve always dreamed of doing, before the choice is no longer yours.❤"
I actually quite liked the movie to be honest 😂 and I'm a die hard fan of the first two movies! But respect where it's due, I enjoyed your video because you're constructive with your criticism and you aren't just spending 20 minutes going "this movie sucked balls" 😎 I suppose the third movie isn't for everyone but I thought it was pretty decent, it's not his best film by a long shot but way better than Yoga Hosers 😂 I like to pretend that movie doesn't exist!
I think clerks 3 definitely highlights Brian O'Halloran's skills because he really got me in the feels in the 2nd half, he needs some recognition for that 😎
@Vee_Infusoo scammer.
The movie reminded me of Alien 3. Right from the beginning a character gets killed off and throughout the film, other characters are having heart attacks. WTF! What are the odds that the 2 main characters have heart attacks. There was no need to kill off Dante other than just shock value…I already came across this movie on blu ray at Walmart for $10, I passed on it..
[Spoilers] 🎞
First off, excellent video and critique. Clerks is my favorite film of all-time. I hesitated to watch Clerks III until today. I’m devastated. It was a beautifully emotional ending, yes. But, Dante’s death is not sitting well with me. I shed lots of tears for sure. I’ll have to give it some time before I watch it again.
I will say, as many other people have said, Brian’s performance here is extraordinary.
I saw clerks three was in Walmart today on DVD and I was like when did this happen
Apart from a few screenings it didn't have a theatrical release per se. He was touring it throughout the US the 2nd half of last year.
@@nettack how do you tour a film?
@@dspsblyuth think he meant touting
Sadly, Smith lost his talent years ago.
Outside of the happy ending override which is a trope I hate, the worst aspect of Clerks 3 for me was Elias. I found him kind of annoying in part 2 but in this one he was unbearable.
I will always regret not telling Kevin Smith my suggestion for this movie the time I met him. It would have been cool to have Dante go through a mid-life or existential crisis, and have Stephen Root play his dad. It could turn out his dad was dead the whole time even though thats a cliché by now but yeah, this movie is a huge missed opportunity