If you’ve grown up with the characters from the Clerks movies over the last 28 years, this extremely meta conclusion to the comedy trilogy packs more of an emotional punch than you might expect – although new viewers are likely to be left unmoved by the deluge of in-jokes and call-backs.

Premise: Sixteen years after Dante (Brian O'Halloran) and Randal (Jeff Anderson) bought the Quick Stop, Randal suffers a massive heart-attack during an argument with Elias (Trevor Fehrman). After surviving his brush with death, Randal is inspired to make his own independent movie about his experiences as a clerk in a convenience store, and enlists his friends as the cast and crew.

Review:

Even more so than 2019’s Jay & Silent Bob Reboot, Clerks III is unashamedly aimed solely at existing fans of the Clerks films, and of writer/director Kevin Smith’s wider “View-Askewniverse”. Many of the jokes rely heavily on call-backs to events and conversations from the earlier films, and there’s little attempt made to fill new viewers in on the characters’ backstories other than in the most broad of strokes. I say this because, if you’ve not got at least a passing familiarity with the earlier Clerks films, I really can’t imagine that you’ll get much enjoyment from this concluding instalment. But then again, who watches the final part of a trilogy if they haven’t seen the earlier movies…?

For viewers of a certain generation in particular, the Clerks trilogy represents a unique viewing experience, as we’ve quite literally grown up (and grown old) with these characters over the last 28 years. The first Clerks film came out in 1994, and explored the anxieties and dilemmas facing 20-somethings looking to find their place in the world, while 2006’s Clerks II revisited the characters in their 30s as they dealt with their ‘quarter-life crises’ about not having lived up to their idealised versions of their lives. In Clerks III we see Dante and Randal as they approach 50, and inevitably have to confront their own mortality and look back over their lives.

“…at times, it almost feels impossible to separate the fiction from the reality…”

It’s in this respect that Clerks III really feels like art-imitating-life-imitating-art in a truly meta sense – as most people probably know, writer/director Kevin Smith famously suffered a near-fatal ‘widow maker’ heart-attack in 2018, and he’s clearly channelled those experiences, and the effect they had on him, into the script for Clerks III. In this movie, Randal (Jeff Anderson) suffers a ‘widow maker’ heart-attack himself, and when he comes out of surgery afterwards, it’s with a renewed sense that he has to do something productive with his ‘borrowed time’. So having spent years watching movies, Randal decides to channel his energy into making a movie – and decides to base his movie on all of his experiences from working as a clerk in the Quick Stop convenience store.

If all of this sounds strangely familiar, it’s because the movie-within-a-movie that Randal intends to make is, of course, essentially the first Clerks film, which itself was based on Kevin Smith’s experiences as a convenience store clerk. Even the title for Randal’s movie, Inconvenience, was the original draft title for Clerks. And just as Kevin Smith enlisted friends and family to help him make Clerks (along with about $30k of credit card debt), Randal recruits his friends and colleagues to help him make his movie, appointing best-friend Dante (Brian O'Halloran) as the producer so that Dante can deal with all of the difficult practicalities, like raising finance.

“…a lot more emotionally impactful than I was expecting…”

The fact that Kevin Smith has effectively made a film in which the characters based on his own life experiences are making a movie about their own (fictional) experiences as convenience store clerks, which is essentially a remake of the film that Kevin Smith made 28 years ago about his own (real life) experiences as a convenience store clerk, gives you an idea of the meta ouroboros-esque tone of Clerks III. At times, it almost feels impossible to separate the fiction from the reality, the artifice from the truth, especially when Kevin Smith provides a voiceover during the end credits in which he discusses the real-life context of making the film, and talks about an alternative ending that was scripted but not filmed.

Perhaps because this film is so closely entwined with real-life events, it arguably leans more into the drama and away from the comedy than either Clerks or Clerks II did. That’s not to say it’s not funny – there are plenty of amusing moments and running gags – but it doesn’t have anything as outlandish as the donkey show in Clerks II, for example, and it steers clear of the more ‘silly’ (but still hugely enjoyable) humour of some of his other films like Jay & Silent Bob Reboot or Mallrats. But this is perhaps not surprising for a film inspired by Kevin Smith’s own near-fatal heart-attack, and the film itself is dedicated to Lisa Spoonauer, the actress who played Caitlin in Clerks, who sadly passed away in 2017 at the age of just 44.

“…Brian O’Halloran & Jeff Anderson get to play some genuinely raw emotional moments…”

Just as with the most moving part of Jay & Silent Bob Reboot (where Ben Affleck reprised his role as Holden McNeil in a scene which dealt with that film’s central emotional theme of redemption through parental love), I found Clerks III to be a lot more emotionally impactful than I was expecting. In making Clerks III, Kevin Smith is a 50-something reminiscing over his life after having been forced to face his own mortality, and his characters in this film are going through similarly emotional self-reflective journeys. Amid all of the comedy, the film doesn’t shy away from certain realities, and there are a number of scenes where Brian O'Halloran and Jeff Anderson in particular get to play some genuinely raw emotional moments.

Brian O'Halloran and Jeff Anderson have never been better than in Clerks III, but the film is also full of returning characters and actors from the first two films, including Rosario Dawson as Becky (who arguably gets some of the film’s best scenes), Trevor Fehrman as Elias (who is the main comic relief in the movie) and Marilyn Ghigliotti, who returns as Veronica. Jay (Jason Mewes) and Silent Bob are also back (of course), but many of the people who played the customers in the original Clerks movie have also returned to play the ‘customers’ in Randal’s movie, Inconvenience. Kevin Smith’s daughter Harley Quinn Smith also reprises her role as Jay’s daughter Milly from Jay & Silent Bob Reboot, and in a particularly touching in-joke, appears in a recreation of the scene from Clerks that Kevin Smith’s mother appeared in back in 1994.

“…an ode to the decades-long friendship between Dante & Randal…”

And in a way, that little touch – having his daughter reprise a scene originally played by his mother nearly 30 years ago – sums up the genuinely heartfelt tone of the entire movie. Yes, it is a comedy, and it has its fair share of silly moments (including a great running gag about a misunderstood bible quote) – but it’s also an ode to the decades-long friendship between Dante and Randal, two characters that certain viewers will have grown up alongside over the last 28 years. And while some of the jokes in Clerks III may not have stuck with me, the more emotional moments have played on my mind for days after seeing the film. Not bad for a movie trilogy that started with a comedic rant over Dante being number 37 on a certain list…