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  EW review: The 'Clerks' still have itAlso: Great 'Monster House'By Owen Gleiberman  The original "Clerks," Randal (Jeff Anderson) and Dante (Brian O'Halloran), are back in "Clerks II." YOUR E-MAIL ALERTS(Entertainment Weekly) -- If you're a fan of "Clerks," the convenience-store slacker comedy made for $27,000 that, in 1994, established Kevin Smith as the who-needs-a-budget- when- you've-got-attitude? auteur of his generation, then you'll probably want to see "Clerks II." Yet it's precisely devotees of the Smith universe (porn jokes, cruddy camera angles, surprise flights of grunge eloquence, more porn jokes) who have a right to be wary of a "Clerks" sequel. Can Smith, after finding fame and fortune beyond the mini-mall parking lots of New Jersey, now successfully revive the talky, dead-zone limbo of postadolescent wage slaves whose lives are going nowhere? Can he recapture the store-as-movie-set authenticity of the original film? How about its innocently sacrilegious horndog wit? The answer, of course, is that Kevin Smith can recapture all of this -- or, at least, enough of it to make "Clerks II" an agreeable mischievous romp instead of a rip-off -- because he never truly abandoned it in the first place. "Clerks II," unlike "Clerks," has been shot in color and given the semblance of a plot -- will Dante Hicks grow up into a responsible citizen? -- but really, the movie, like "Clerks," is a low-budget excuse for talk: dirty talk, dorky talk, obsessive pop-culture talk (which is better, "The Lord of the Rings" or "Star Wars"?), great gushing geysers of talk, much of it prickly and obscene and hilarious and, in that Kevin Smith way, so smart about being stupid that the characters' verbosity becomes, in every sense, their saving grace. In "Clerks II," the Quick Stop has been closed down due to a fire. Dante (Brian O'Halloran), the neurotically rational, wheel-spinning underachiever who looks like Charlie Sheen after being whacked with a geek stick, and Randal (Jeff Anderson), that spiky, even less evolved specimen of dedicated ... uh, randiness, now work the counter of a Mooby's fast-food franchise. They wear goofy purple uniforms that, if possible, mock their status even more than the Godot-at-the-Ring Dings-rack atmosphere of the convenience store did. Slinging burgers and onion rings to the rare customer who wanders into the place, they jabber, in their nothing-matters/everything-matters way, about such vital topics as Transformers, the Proustian joy of go-carts, the issue of whether two particular body parts should ever meet during sex, and also whether either of these two human zeds plans to get, you know, a future. Dante, at least, wants one. At 33, he has a tawny, domineering fiancee (Jennifer Schwalbach), and he's planning to go with her to Florida, where he's to spend his life running a car wash. The complicating factor is Dante's boss, played by Rosario Dawson -- convincing as a rival love interest, though not necessarily as the manager of a Mooby's. The romantic plot is standard-issue, but the real love story -- the one between Dante and Randal -- is brought to a satisfying, even touching, conclusion. And I haven't even mentioned the donkey sex, or the way Jay (Jason Mewes), with boom-box backup from Silent Bob (Smith), massages his nips as he replays the killer's dance from "The Silence of the Lambs." Talk about touching. EW Grade: B 'Monster House'Reviewed by Lisa Schwarzbaum The notion of a creaky old house that goes beyond haunted -- a house that, in fact, actively haunts, lunging around the neighborhood to chase after the overly curious -- is so cool, it's a wonder no one's ever thought of it before. The mysterious manse that gets star billing in the smartly delirious animated thriller "Monster House" is possessed of windows like eyes and a flying bit of carpet that unfurls tonguelike out the front door to scoop up trespassers. Mr. Nebbercracker (voiced by Steve Buscemi), the old coot who lives inside, is only a minor meanie compared with this house that roars at three brave little neighborhood kids. (Other stars supplying vocals include Maggie Gyllenhaal, Kathleen Turner, and "Napoleon Dynamite's" Jon Heder, who's sweeeet as a videogaming pizza flunky.) Feature first-timer Gil Kenan directs with a zingy sense of kids, comedy, fright, and visual perspective. But the movie also shimmers and shakes in all its motion-capture animated beauty with the slyly deep sensibilities of executive producer Robert Zemeckis. (Zemeckis' not-too-shabby fellow exec prod is Steven Spielberg.) Emotional darkness doesn't just loom in a Zemeckis movie -- it taunts, it surprises, it winks, and sometimes, it flashes a skull grin when drawn, as in "Cast Away," onto the surface of a ball called Wilson. It just so happens, a Wilson spheroid is gobbled up in "Monster House," too: How freaky, and how fun. EW Grade: A- Click Here 
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