\Clerks"" is now 10 years old. That fact will make a lot of people feel old, a lot of people feel nostalgic and some people probably won't care. But for better or for worse, it's clear in hindsight that Kevin Smith's first film helped usher in a new breed of movies filled with pop-culture references and sexually perverse dialogue. ""Clerks"" was also a major contributor to the independent film craze of the 1990s. The movie was practically born into cult status, and it's surprising that what Smith officially announced a few days ago didn't happen sooner: A ""Clerks"" sequel is in the works, at this point titled ""The Passion of the Clerks.""
Smith himself had made it very clear that he was through with what is known as the View Askew universe, which refers to the characters and themes from his movies set in New Jersey (""Clerks,"" ""Mallrats,"" ""Chasing Amy,"" ""Dogma"" and ""Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back""). That last film was a pop culture-stuffed party/eulogy for his works up until then, a turning point after which he would turn his focus to more serious or diverse projects. So why's he turning back now?
If you take Smith at his word, it's because he fell in love with the characters from ""Clerks"" all over again while compiling the 10th anniversary DVD.
Surely that's true to an extent, but it's hard to ignore the fact that Smith's first serious film, ""Jersey Girl,"" was a critical failure at the box office, and deservedly so. It's a clich??-ridden, awful bore of a movie, the kind Smith would have mocked in his prior works. Smith loves to say that the backlash from ""Gigli"" helped seal the fate of ""Jersey Girl,"" but it doesn't help things when your movie has all the cleverness of an episode of ""Home Improvement.""
So whatever the rationale behind it, Clerks 2 is slated to start filming early next year. Smith is often a smart, witty writer, and it's probably better that he stay with lighter fare. But I still cringe when I think about what Clerks 2 could be. Smith desperately needs to come up with a script that is unlike any comedy he's previously made, as the ""Star Wars"" and sex-jokes gags are starting to tread pretty thin. This was proven by ""Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back,"" which is funny maybe once until you realize it's just a mess of silly cameo appearances and references to Smith's earlier, funnier works. Clerks 2 needs to have a plot, and a plausible one at that. Smith definitely has another good movie inside him. Mainly, he just needs to realize that shock value can only be funny for so long.
In the end there is hope. Smith has posted some of his thoughts on his Web site, and they're somewhat reassuring. The film will focus on Randal (Jeff Anderson) and Dante (Brian O'Halloran) dealing with new issues as they grapple with aging. There will be no cameos. There will be no groan-inducing references to the first film. Jay and Silent Bob will have the same amount of screen time as in the original movie. Still, a lot of what made ""Clerks"" work in the first place was that it was fresh and raw, and it came unannounced. ""Clerks"" is special because it did things that hadn't been done before. No one had ever constructed entire scenes based on discussions of ""Star Wars,"" and the average audience hadn't heard the descriptive sexual language that Kevin Smith captured on film. Unless he does something that hasn't been tried before, ""The Passion of the Clerks"" will end up just another bland sequel that causes nostalgia for the original.
