Offensive R-Rated Comedy Is The Best In Fan-Favorite Franchise, Watch Without Netflix

What is Clerks 2 about, aside from endless pop culture gags? After the Quick Stop gas station burns down, Dante and Randal get new jobs at Mooby’s (basically, McDonald’s). Dante is engaged and getting ready to start a new chapter in his life, but everything from his friendship with Randal to a forbidden affair with a coworker threatens to keep him a Jersey boy forever.

As with many Kevin Smith movies, Clerks 2 is a mixture of big-name actors and much less well-known performers. For example, Smith himself is back as Silent Bob, and he is joined by familiar Clerks faces Brian O’Halloran, Jeff Anderson, and Jason Mewes. Joining them this time around are Rosario Dawson, Jason Lee, and Ben Affleck (the latter two in small roles and playing different characters than in other Smith films like Mallrats and Chasing Amy).

Relative to its budget, Clerks 2 was a major hit. Made for only $5 million, this movie went on to earn $26.9 million (you can buy plenty of Chewlies with that kind of cash). This helped the film get a sequel, though Smith’s career and some behind-the-scenes drama with Jeff Anderson meant Clerks 3 didn’t come out until 16 years after this film. The wait was mostly worth it, but this second movie is still clearly the best in the franchise.

Upon its release, Clerks 2 generally pleased critics, earning a 63 percent critical rating on Rotten Tomatoes. Generally, critics praised this film for its mixture of “graphic humor” and “insight” that made the first film such a genre-defining hit. Audiences loved this sequel that much more: it currently has an 84 percent audience rating (if Smith won fans over any harder, he might have to crib a line from Jason Mewes and rename himself Don Juan de la Nooch).

As a lifelong Kevin Smith fan (we’re talking framed autographs, a picture together, the works), I’d have to agree. Clerks 2 is the rare sequel that lives up to the fierce innovation of the original in almost every possible way. And even if the prolific director were to make 37 sequels (in a row?), this second movie would still be the best in the franchise.

That’s because this sequel finds the blend between introspection and comedy that the first film was, if we’re being honest, sorely lacking. All the best parts of that first movie are the idiot customer vignettes that instantly resonated with anyone who has ever been a clerk.

However, the drama of Dante juggling two women feels largely tacked on…an attempt to make everything feel like a cohesive whole rather than the ultimate anthology of customer service horror stories.

Clerks 2 still has hilarious customer interactions, and it brings in more of Smith’s incisive pop culture humor (honestly, the gags in here about Lord of the Rings and Transformers are just as funny as the Death Star contractors bit from the first movie).

But it also has very meaningful things to say about getting older and worrying about whether middle age means the end of new adventures.

When you consider that Kevin Smith (who has basically been pigeonholed by his own very niche success) is pondering these same matters regarding his career, it gives this offensive comedy some surprising and rewarding depth.

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Will you find Clerks 2 as funny as a donkey show in a fast food restaurant, or will you wish Listerfiend had kept you far away? You won’t know until you stream it on Tubi, snoogans. Come for the funny jokes and stay for the value meal of Dante and Randal’s weirdly captivating McMidlife crisis.