When Kevin Smith made his microbudget splash with 1994’s Clerks, his was a singular voice that spoke for an entire generation of twentysomething slackers. In Clerks II, Smith returns to the slackers of the first film (Jeff Anderson and Brian O’Halloran), and though there is some hilarious dialogue – particularly for movie geeks – the entire exercise has an air of sadness surrounding it this time around. Their mental maturity – especially when it comes to sex – has at this point gone from a state of prolonged adolescence to one of arrested development. These guys were funny 12 years ago; now they look and sound like MySpace predators.
