The good news for fanboys and indie-movie true believers is that Kevin Smith's 12-years-later sequel to the profane, ultra-low budget film that made him an overnight god is simply more of the same. That's also the bad news. When we left bickering slackers Dante Hicks (Brian O'Halloran) and Randal Graves (Jeff Anderson), they were hardly working at the Quick Stop convenience store in small-town Leonardo, New Jersey. And 12 years later, they're still there, until Dante arrives to open and finds the place in flames, thanks to Randal's propensity for leaving the coffee machine on overnight. They wind up hardly working behind the counter at Mooby's, a local fast-food chain, all the better to torment born-again Christian LORD OF THE RINGS freak Elias (Trevor Fehrman) and to shoot the breeze, to put it more politely than Randal would. Dope dealers Jay and Silent Bob (Jason Mewes, Smith) are still hanging around outside; porn-obsessed Randal passes scathing judgment on everyone; and STAR WARS still rules, dude. But Dante's real life might actually be on the verge of beginning: He's about to move to Florida with his besotted fiancée, Emma (Smith's wife, Jennifer Schwalbach), whose dad is giving him a job in car-wash management and plans to buy the couple a new house as a wedding gift. All Dante has to do is get through one more day of serving cow-tipper burgers and cow-pie desserts ("a sweet finish") without anything awful happening. If only he weren't getting cold feet and thinking that way about his best friend, Mooby's manager Becky Scott (Rosario Dawson); and if only Randal hadn't booked a real-live Tijuana donkey show as Dante's once-in-a-lifetime going-away gift. CLERKS II actually has significantly more plot than its predecessor, but the dialogue is the show, and it's as filthy and geeked-out as ever. Filthier, in fact: the bar for ear-searingly shocking has been raised considerably since 1994, forcing Smith to scale new heights (or plumb new depths) of scatological and pornographic expression. If not precisely poetic in its elaborate offensiveness, it's certainly imaginative. Unfortunately, that's not the same as interesting or engaging, unless you're a dyed-in-the-wool fan. And frankly, there's something more than a little sad about the spectacle of men blowing through their thirties with the same aimless torpor they brought to bear on their twenties: The future is catching up to Dante and Randal, and it's not a pretty sight. --Maitland McDonagh
