Clerks 2

You know, I was all set and ready to hate the shit out of Clerks 2. Lord knows precedent would have allowed me to write three quarters of a biting, negative review without even watching it. And all the pieces were there: predictable love story, dialogue that is both uncinematic and unrealistic, bolted-on pop culture geek references -- but you know, Smith took all of those things, all fundamental problems with a lot of his movies, and made probably what could have been the best movie he could have made out of the style that is, for everything that is flawed about it, his.

I think this is now my favourite movie that he's made, at least tied with Dogma but that had more heresy in it so it's sort of an unfair playing field.

Letting his first two characters grow up and be as unremarkable and insecure as would be expected of a pair of everyday dudes who don't even have particularly insightful things to say about Star Wars gives the film the kind of ernestness that Smith probably had to fight hard to save from the temptation to insert too many clever one liners or extended rants by characters who really wouldn't have very many of them in their actual lives.

It's more than a worthy sequel to Clerks, but at the same time I'm glad there's absolutely nowhere he can go with that setting and those characters after this.