Saturday in Expatville

Saw Clerks II today while the car was in the shop. Loving the original as I do, there was some trepidation about the idea of a sequel twelve years after the original. I don't think that our cultural icons are so sacrosanct as to never be mentioned, much less taken out of their original context. Clerks and Mallrats come fairly close, though, just for being such definitive touchstones in the zeitgeist of my coming-of-age era: the early mid '90s.

I'm happy to say that the '06 version is as brilliant as the original, and possibly more so.

Did I really want to see Dante and Randal having the same conversations they would have had in their early '20s without the context of being in their early '30s? Do I want to see fat, bald and over 50 Diamond Dave reunite with Van Halen? No and no. But Dante and Randal have grown up...somewhat. And that has made all the difference. Clerks II does not piss on the masterpiece that came twelve years earlier, because it has factored life into the mix. Dante is about to move to Florida with his fiance: how will Randal deal? Jay & Silent Bob are fresh out of rehab: how will this inconvenient truth affect their booming dope trade? Where will they all go without the Quick Stop Groceries?

The answers are all there, and the writing and dialogue are as sharp as the original. It's a rare occasion that one can revisit their early '20s from the perspective of their early '30s and say that it all made sense. But somehow it did, and that's the perspective that one gets from Clerks II.

One also walks away with a 12-hour boner courtesey of Rosario Dawson. That's never a bad thing.