Movie Review: Kevin Smith – “Clerks III: The Convenience Tour”

Lionsgate Films – 13 Sep 2022 (film release) / Paramount Theater – 22 Sep 2022 (event)

While certainly an entertaining and fun event, Clerks III goes a bit darker than it really needs to.

It took me a little while to write this review because, here it is almost a week later, and I’m working out some of my feelings about Clerks III. First of all, I should say that I’m not just writing a review of the movie, but the entire “Convenience Tour” that Kevin Smith went on with this particular movie. It seems to be his new favored form of exhibiting his movies, as, his previous film, Jay and Silent Bob Reboot, was pretty much only available to see in theaters as part of Smith’s tour. This time around the movie is in theaters everywhere, and will be coming out on streaming in just about two weeks. But the appeal of the ”Convenience Tour” was that the movie would be followed by a Q & A session with the director himself.

I also want to acknowledge where I was in my personal life for this movie: the tour came through town on the day before the 15^th anniversary of my mother’s death. I hoped that the movie would be helpful to distract me from the anniversary, but little did I expect that Clerks III would be one of the darkest comedies I’ve seen in a long time.

The film basically revolves around the main character, Randal, having a massive heart attack, mirroring the heart attack that Smith had himself a few years back. After surviving his heart attack, a type of heart attack that only has a 20% survival rate, Randal decides to make a movie about his life working at the Quick Stop convenience store. The movie Randal decides to make is basically Clerks I, with actual clips from the original movie to represent the movie that Randal’s making.

I’m going to try to keep this mostly spoiler-free, but there’s one spoiler I’m going to give away that literally happens in the first few minutes of the movie anyway: in the first moments of the movie, we find out that, shortly after the events of Clerks II, Rebecca, Dante’s pregnant fiancée, was tragically killed by a drunk driver. This is probably the plot point that upset me the most, as Clerks II was my favorite Kevin Smith film and this revelation callously throws the ending of Clerks II right out the window. That being said, Rosario Dawson, who played Rebecca, still has a major role in the movie, appearing in Dante’s mind to give him advice and guide him throughout the movie. Still, it feels like a cheap trick to motivate the male main character by killing off the most prominent female character in the entire trilogy.

The movie does a decent job of mixing comedy and drama, diving deeper into dark territory than any comedy Kevin Smith has made before (unless, of course, you want to count Tusk as a comedy, but I’m not sure even Smith knows what genre that bizarre movie belongs in). And I definitely cried through the ending, but I was also in a pretty vulnerable place and not sure that the tears were that earned. But definitely be warned that, if you’re looking for Smith’s usual lighthearted fare, you’re going to be gravely disappointed.

Smith’s Q&A afterwards was interesting, although it was hard to keep Smith focused on short answers in hopes of giving more people time to ask questions. Smith regularly puts out videos of his speaking engagements, and one of his speaking movies (2010’s Too Fat For 40) involved him answering just one question over the course of almost two complete hours. Thankfully, Smith was able to reign himself in a little more so as to answer more than one question, but he still went off on uncontrolled tangents that kept the event from moving forward. Some of the revelations he made during his session was that he’s still running into roadblocks trying to make the Mallrats sequel, Twilight of the Mallrats, as the company that owns the original doesn’t care enough about the movie to fund a sequel. However, Lionsgate, after working with Smith on his last movie, said they will try to intervene to get the movie made. He also revealed that he wants his 19^th movie to be a sequel to Tusk called Tusks (dear God, why?) and for his 20^th film to be the third Jay and Silent Bob film.

Ultimately, it was a fun event, and a very good movie that lives up to Smith’s comedic standards, but I’m still left wondering if I’m really satisfied with the movie as the ending for these characters that Smith has been working on for 28 years. If Clerks II has too much of a perfectly happy ending, Clerks III goes in the exact opposite direction and, even while trying to find a ray of hope in what happens at the end, it’s just darker than it really needs to be. If Smith had stopped with Clerks II, I might have been happier.