 Joel Siegel, the ABC critic who famously walked out of a screening of Kevin Smith's Clerks II, announcing aloud that it was the first time he had done so in 30 years of reviewing, will find little support from his colleagues. The film doesn't receive any really devastating reviews and it does receive quite a few positive ones. Most are somewhere in the middle. Siegel reportedly left the theater following a scene involving sex with a donkey. Kyle Smith in the New York Post even refers to the departure in his review: "You have to work hard (or be as old as Siegel) to take offense at Smith," he comments. Here's Ann Hornaday's take on the scene in the Washington Post: "Smith may be the one filmmaker working today who can so easily convey a sense of profound spiritual faith while shamelessly grubbing for laughs with an on-screen donkey act." And here's A.O. Scott's in the New York Times: "Mr. Smith's fondness for jokes about excrement, bestiality and related topics is so evidently childish that it is hard to be offended, or even especially provoked, when he tries to test the limits of taste." Likewise Chris Kaltenbach writes in the Baltimore Sun: "While the film sometimes stoops to lows the term sophomoric barely describes, it also possesses a sly wisdom and compassion that's easy to admire." Carrie Rickey writes in the Philadelphia Inquirer: "As though testing an enormous quantity of spaghetti for doneness, Smith throws a vatload of obscenely funny gags at the wall, and many of them stick. If you don't laugh out loud at the bit about Star Wars versus Lord of the Rings, you don't have a pulse." |
