This movie was every bit as funny today as I remembered it being when I first saw it on VHS years ago.

What is it that makes something funny? What is it that makes this movie funny? I know it when I laugh, but it's often hard to quantify why. What does it take to compose such an experience? What causes it?

Perhaps it is some sinister voyeuristic glee at watching all these pathetic characters as they go about their mundane little lives, pontificating and debating such fundamental questions as what precisely constitutes sex (keeping in mind that this was filmed well before the Zippergate era) (a debate that would resurface in another context two hops later in "Chasing Amy" -- also pre-Zippergate), the puny and even more pathetic creatures known as "customers", and the questionable morality of the Rebel forces in destroying the second partially completed Death Star in Episode VI, when countless innocent independent contractors on the project would also have been killed by the massive explosion above the moon orbiting Endor.

That's just the tip of the iceberg.

In one regard, much of the acting in this movie is obviously amateur. In a lot of the scenes, you can see that people are just waiting for each other to finish their lines, and then speak on queue, instead of coming up with a "genuine" reaction to what the other has said, as an experienced professional would do. This repeatedly tears away the standard movie illusion that the dialog being heard is spontanious.

OTOH, the words being spoken in these obviously staged conversations are interesting enough that the effect becomes a magnitude more engaging than many a polished, well-performed Hollywood cliché&;. The substance of what is being said is enough. I credit that mostly to the writer.

Over the course of watching this and the films that follow, I observed that all of these Kevin Smith productions interveave the gut-busting humor with some good serious dramatic themes. (By conservitave standards, almost all of the jokes would be classified as degenerate immoral trash. When viewed in the context of modern, South Park-ian mores, the comedy is par for the rotfl course.) The serious side is not just sentimental sap, but often leads to thought provoking ideas about life, love, meaning, etc.

During each of these entries, I'm going to attempt to sum up the theme of the in a sentence or two. If I start to sound like a some sort of pretentious postmodern intellectualist new age gasbag, or whatever, so be it.

For this one, I would say it speaks to the meaninglessness of human beings acting as cogs in the machine that is modern life. The Dante character is the epitome of the direction-less Gen X-er, who has all but given up on finding any meaning in his life beyond that of the day-to-day encounters with Stupid People[tm]. He has a devoted girlfriend, but pines after someone who broke up with him years ago (everyone but he is able to see she was, and is, a cheating slut). He gets weaseled into manning the store on his day off, and then ends up staying the entire day. Unhappy about his situation in life, yet he does nothing to change it. Hopeless. There is a darkness behind the humor.

But it's still damn funny to watch him get pelted with cigarattes by an angry mob of outraged customers, all of whom ar easily led to believe that he, the culprit who sold them the smokes, is personally responsible for the lung cancer they will eventually contract. (I love the extended version of that scene in the Deleted section.)

I have no proper ending, so...

"Clerks. A really funny black and white low budget movie."