The latest and last edition of movies in the View Askew Universe is a huge disappointment. 

The View Askew Universe is a series of comedy movies that have been coming out since 1994, written and directed by Kevin Smith. These movies include “Clerks,” “Clerks II,”“Dogma,”“Chasing Amy,” “Mall Rats,” “Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back,” and “Jay and Silent Bob Reboot”

The movies are about a group of friends that hang around malls and stores making vulgar jokes and doing drugs. Despite the vulgar fart jokes these films also have their serious and wholesome moments.

Actors in the View Askew cinematic universe include Matt Damon and Ben Affleck, just to name the most well-known. 

After a surprise release, with how late the trailer came out and the short opportunity to see the flim in theaters, many fans that have been watching the universe since it started were angry and annoyed. 

“Clerks III” starts with Dante, who is a recurring main character in the universe, looking at a gravestone of Becky, who died in a car crash between movies. Becky was Donte’s fiance and also his boss at the restaurant they both used to work at. 

Killing Becky off ruins the whole premise of the Clerks Trilogy of movies and everything happy about Dante’s life. Dante starts hallucinating a ghost of Becky when he visits her grave, as he questions if life is even worth living anymore. Becky’s ghost continues to tell him that it is worth it to keep living and that Dante needs to keep pushing to find a purpose in life. 

Randal, who is Dante’s best friend and lifelong business partner, miraculously survives a very abrupt heart attack in their shop, the Quick Stop. 

Randal’s near-death experience motivates him to make a movie summarizing his life and interactions at the Quick Stop, in which Randal and his friends will star as themselves. 

Randal writes a script consisting of the most memorable moments and customer interactions to ever happen at the store, including many throwbacks to “Clerks I” and “Clerks II.” As they continue to film the movie, Randal and Dante see that they have had a great friendship and that Randal’s heart attack has brought them closer together than ever. 

As they finish filming the movie, Randal and Dante need to shoot one last scene at the old restaurant they used to work at, where Dante originally met Becky. 

Dante gets really emotional, and he and Randal have a very heated argument about how Randal only ever cares about himself, which results in Dante collapsing with a heart attack. 

The movie ends with Dante dying from his heart attack and sitting in a movie theater in Heaven, watching the movie of his life.

Kevin Smith decided to ruin everything about the View Askew Universe in “Clerks III,” and for no good reason. There is no reason that the cinematic universe couldn’t just continue to come out with movies, even if they were to continue with different characters and actors.

 Smith took characters that people have been watching for 25 years and killed them off just because he didn’t want to make movies anymore. 

Movie directors need to realize they can just stop making movies if they want a universe to end, they don’t have to go out of their way to ruin it by killing everyone off in a final film. 

Now, there were some occasionally funny moments in the movie that made the experience somewhat enjoyable. Some of the funny moments were that at the beginning of the movie: Elias was worshiping God and even made non-fungable tokens of Jesus kites that rise when they increase in value, which are unique digital graphic tokens that can not be replicated. That is the only thing that makes this movie worth a viewer’s time.

When Randal has a heart attack, Elias is convinced that God isn’t real and that he wants to start worshiping Satan. 

As the movie progresses, when Elias walks into the Quick Stop he has a different Satanic outfit every time, and they get more and more ridiculous each time, which is funny. 

One thing that isn’t funny whatsoever is the Tik Tok, Crypto currency and NFT jokes throughout the movie. 

Whenever new movies try to relate jokes to teenagers and young adults, it doesn’t work:it almost always seems forced and cringe. The movie could have definitely done without it. 

If the first half of the movie is drop dead hilarious, like previous View Askew Universe movies, it would have made up for the fact that the second half is way too sad and just all-around terrible. 

 When you compare “Clerks III” to “Clerks I” and “Clerks II,” it doesn’t even touch the entertainment level of those movies in any way shape or form. This is just a mediocre comedy that has an awful ending and plot.