Reviews

You'll like Clerks 2. If you liked the original Clerks, this is Kevin's Smith's masterpiece. It mirrors the original Clerks, but it shows how much he's grown as a writer and a director. From the black and white/color shots, to the crane shot (a *beep* crane shot), to just the placement of people in the Camera shots...everyone one of these things contributed to the overall enjoyment of this movie.

The script is crisp and tense, with just the right amount of reality and joy. There is no long monologues or actors stumbling over lines. There's this freedom in Smith's work that doesn't feel forced or attempting to impress anyone...but he impresses everyone with just the beautiful way of putting together his scenes.

I wholeheartedly recommend this movie to anyone and everyone, but especially those who are on the verge of 30 and the rest of your life. It definitely impressed me and touched me in a way that I didn't expect. It's a fitting end to the Jersey Viewaskewverse.

Hopefully, in 10 years, they do another Clerks movie. I'd love to see these guys in their 40s. Randal and Dante are the most engaging of couples and Smith writes such an engaging story about friends in their 30s without pandering or compromising the vision of their piece.

You will love it. Even if you hated all his other movies past Clerks, you will love it.

It had all the makings of why I hated these type of genre movies. Teen comedies with guy trying to lose their virginity seemed to be beat to death by the Sixteen Candles stuff, only to be resurrected by Scream and the movies that followed after (which didn't seem to have the knowing "wink" at the audience that Scream did). I never saw myself in these comedies. Long Duk Dong in 16 candles came close (hey, there's an Asian guy. but he's such an idiot. but he's Asian!). I could appreciate these movies by being an American, but I couldn't find people who were like me that weren't stereotypes.

My brother had me rent the movie yesterday, and I have to admit that I really liked it. It didn't cop out with the stereotypes...hell it even showed why certain Asian stereotypes were there in the first place. The previous movies I saw with notable Asian Actors was Yellow and American Adobo (not to mention the very fun but short lived Margret Cho Show), and I really liked that, for a mainstream movie like this, that they would acknowledge 1) why these stereotypes exist 2) why these stereotypes are funny and 3) why these characters don't necessarily prescribe to these stereotypes. Both Harold and Kumar come from second generation families. Even though Kumar's speech was a little over the top, it highlights the right idea of how the first generation sees the second generation and how it's the job of the second generation to change traditions (for a very similar speech, check out Yellow which has an immigrant father telling his son's girlfriend why he only believes in work instead of ideology).

This movie also works well in the realm of comedy because it blends the general idea of a "comedy of manners" from British comedy and a "comedy of teens" from American comedy into something that really works. Race-comedy is America's bread and butter, and to have a comedy about race that deals with the idea of "model minorities" really made this movie for me.

I was a very big fan of this Asian-American theatrical troop when I was younger (their name escapes me right now) from San Fransisco and Harold and Kumar remind me why I liked that troop in the first place: Asian people aren't just an object of comedy and ridicule, they have emotional experiences that are tragic and funny and are relatable to different people.

• gsanchet

I'm going to college and I've been going to college since 1994. Before that, I've seen my brother go through college from 1985 until I left for college in 1994. I've been a fledgling student, to a drop out, to now a person getting his Ph.D. I've seen so many students walk through the doors of Universites with a diploma in their hand and I can't help but think how much their lives seemed a lot like A Different World. Despite the silliness of the show, college, for many of my friends (and now my students), deals with the 3 same conflicting natures that were depicted in the show: 1) making a name for yourself, 2) finding what you really want out of life and 3) connecting to your roots. They hit on those universal themes (just like Spike Lee did with School Daze, which, curiously enough, could be read as the precursor to A Different World). I think it's one of the few shows that tried to show what it was like for a person of color to go through the university system. Shows like Class of 1995 or Felicity attempt to show college life, but this show really does hit on those points that are important. Even now it seems more fresh and more biting than most comedies.

I think the key to this show was that the humor masked the depth and the character progression of the actors in the show. You could have episodes that dealt with rape and the LA Riots and it would sneak up on people because they'd tune in just to laugh. It was a decently balanced show for its time, and I haven't seen a show about college that has matched it yet.