`Clerks II' is a lot like old times

Shot for a dime in black and white, the first "Clerks" (1994) looks better with each passing year, and you can't say that about everything that came out of New Jersey. In writer-director Kevin Smith's debut feature, Dante Hicks and Randal Graves worked as register jockeys at a Quick Stop convenience mart and an adjoining video store, respectively. Portrayed by newcomers Brian O'Halloran and Jeff Anderson, the goateed, initiative-challenged Dante played off his serenely troublemaking friend like the duo had rehearsed their act all their slacking, sweet-natured lives.

Smith got the best from everybody coming through the place or hanging out in front of it, chiefly the drug dealer Jay (Jason Mewes, invaluable in "Clerks II" if only for the way he says "yupyup") and his comrade Silent Bob (Smith). What was striking about "Clerks" wasn't just its winging-it vibe. Straight off, the writer-director displayed a knack for pacing his patter swiftly in front of a dispassionate, usually stationary camera. It was like art-house indie vaudeville. His characters' epic time-killing dissections of the initial "Star Wars" trilogy's merits blended seamlessly with their half-acknowledged fear of encroaching adulthood. Does growing up mean no more playing hooky (or hockey) on company time? Does it mean, in Dante's sage words, not being able to "rip into the occasional customer"?

"Clerks II" trades the old Quick Stop for a burger joint and answers those questions in the negative. The new film is more conventional and stridently outrageous. Yet it offers a few choice bits of effrontery. In an example of the sequel's co-mingled pluses and minuses, a protracted scene of "interspecies erotica" involving a donkey and his keeper is redeemed by a simple, unexpected line from the least likely character.

Having lost the Quick Stop to a fire, Dante and Randal, a little jowly now that they've hit their early 30s, have matriculated sideways to Mooby's, where they flip burgers alongside the "Lord of the Rings" freak Elias (Trevor Fehrman). Dante's engaged to Emma (Jennifer Schwalbach, the real-life Mrs. Smith), a brittle harridan whose family is setting up the couple with a job and a house in Florida. Randal can't believe his friend would forsake him, and New Jersey.