Clerks II

Making a sequel to a global cult classic is the cinematic equivalent of Rolf Harris being invited in to redecorate the Sistine Chapel.

You just don't do it.

Well, you just don't do it...unless the first-time director takes charge, writes the script, casts the leads (preferably the originals) and edits the finished product.

It's been twelve years since mini mart clerks Dante (O'Halloran) and Randal (Anderson) first traded insults, dissected pop culture and played hockey on the shop roof.

Now they're back, working in an anonymous McDonalds style fast-food restaurant after Quick Stop burned to the ground.

Times have changed (even in situ drug dealers Jay and Silent Bob have found God and entered rehab) but the shallow world view of our two anti-hero slackers stays the same.

Except that Dante has been offered a chance to escape New Jersey - the father of his fiancee has offered him the job of running his car wash in Florida.

Director Kevin Smith has cooked up the same delirious brew of bad taste, profane gags and pop culture obsessions that fired up his original more than a decade ago.

However, he has also tempered a narrative spiked by acid one-liners with a leavening of humanity - despite their fractious friendship, Dante and Randal obviously love one another "but not in a gay way".

New to the mix comes Rosario Dawson as the improbably gorgeous manageress of the burger joint and Elias, an adolescent obsessed with Lord of the Rings, Transformers and Jesus.

(A front-of-counter verbal spat with a customer and LOTR fan whose love is dismissed by Randal as "three movies about people walking to a volcano" is priceless.)

Add a pinch of bestiality - or inter-species erotica - and you have the perfect night's comedy viewing...and a worthy sequel.

Tim Evans