I've been waiting to see the infamous live-action Clerks pilot since I found out it existed about fifteen years ago. After years of waiting, I finally got around to watching it tonight, and really, there isn't much to say about it. It's exactly what it's been described as: a PG-rated, clean version of Clerks that plays like it would air next to a "Saved By the Bell" spin-off.
Shot in 1995 after the success of the film of the same name, this 22-minute unaired sitcom pilot looks just about as cheap as the black and white movie that inspired it. Of course, there's nothing wrong with a production looking cheap as long as it's still good. The movie version of Clerks was cheap, but it was also one of the funniest films of all time so its ultra low budget didn't hurt it at all. Here, every scene obviously takes place on really unimpressive sets that seem like they were leftover from some 1980s sitcom and hadn't been used for years. This wouldn't be a problem if this pilot was even half as funny or entertaining as the flick that inspired it, but that's sadly not the case. I chuckled here and there at some of the sitcom-ish banter, though the only real strong laughs I got out of this came from Randal (here played by Jim Breuer) giving away the endings of every movie a customer tries to rent. It's not a particularly great scene, but it's the best scene in the whole production simply because it actually seems like it takes place in the same universe as the movie. Randal is acting like Randal. In that one brief moment, one could see what a good version of a live-action Clerks series could have looked like if there was strong effort put behind it. The only other time the pilot has any sort of real resemblance to the film is during the ending credits sequence when Soul Asylum's "Can't Even Tell" is played over black and white surveillance footage.
The most impressive aspect of this is the cast that would go on to do better work. Jim Breuer would go on to be quite good on SNL and star in the cult classic Half Baked. Keri Russell would go on to do "Felicity" and "The Americans". Rick Gomez would go on to being one of the best parts of "Justified" and become a great character actor in general. It's honestly a bit surprising how long this has stayed hidden given how many recognizable faces are in it. I don't think anyone in the cast here are bad actors. They were just given really safe, watered down material that they couldn't do much with. Andrew Lowery made for an acceptable Dante and Noelle Parker (from Ernest Saves Christmas) worked pretty well as Veronica. The truth is the only people that might have possibly been able to save this were the original cast members from the film, although there was no way ABC would have given them the parts.
Obviously the Clerks pilot is pretty bad, although I can't deny I still enjoyed watching it and was never bored by it. I'm sure I'm in the minority when I say this isn't absolutely unwatchable. From how Kevin Smith and the cast of the film described this, I expected it to be the worst pilot ever. It's far from that. I wouldn't recommend it to Clerks fans, but I would recommend it to people that get enjoyment out of bad sitcoms. 3/10
Shot in 1995 after the success of the film of the same name, this 22-minute unaired sitcom pilot looks just about as cheap as the black and white movie that inspired it. Of course, there's nothing wrong with a production looking cheap as long as it's still good. The movie version of Clerks was cheap, but it was also one of the funniest films of all time so its ultra low budget didn't hurt it at all. Here, every scene obviously takes place on really unimpressive sets that seem like they were leftover from some 1980s sitcom and hadn't been used for years. This wouldn't be a problem if this pilot was even half as funny or entertaining as the flick that inspired it, but that's sadly not the case. I chuckled here and there at some of the sitcom-ish banter, though the only real strong laughs I got out of this came from Randal (here played by Jim Breuer) giving away the endings of every movie a customer tries to rent. It's not a particularly great scene, but it's the best scene in the whole production simply because it actually seems like it takes place in the same universe as the movie. Randal is acting like Randal. In that one brief moment, one could see what a good version of a live-action Clerks series could have looked like if there was strong effort put behind it. The only other time the pilot has any sort of real resemblance to the film is during the ending credits sequence when Soul Asylum's "Can't Even Tell" is played over black and white surveillance footage.
The most impressive aspect of this is the cast that would go on to do better work. Jim Breuer would go on to be quite good on SNL and star in the cult classic Half Baked. Keri Russell would go on to do "Felicity" and "The Americans". Rick Gomez would go on to being one of the best parts of "Justified" and become a great character actor in general. It's honestly a bit surprising how long this has stayed hidden given how many recognizable faces are in it. I don't think anyone in the cast here are bad actors. They were just given really safe, watered down material that they couldn't do much with. Andrew Lowery made for an acceptable Dante and Noelle Parker (from Ernest Saves Christmas) worked pretty well as Veronica. The truth is the only people that might have possibly been able to save this were the original cast members from the film, although there was no way ABC would have given them the parts.
Obviously the Clerks pilot is pretty bad, although I can't deny I still enjoyed watching it and was never bored by it. I'm sure I'm in the minority when I say this isn't absolutely unwatchable. From how Kevin Smith and the cast of the film described this, I expected it to be the worst pilot ever. It's far from that. I wouldn't recommend it to Clerks fans, but I would recommend it to people that get enjoyment out of bad sitcoms. 3/10