Reviewed - Clerks II: A FEW hundred years ago (or so it seems), Kevin Smith directed a sharp little film named Clerks. The picture, made in black and white for $27,000, put two convenience store workers before the camera and asked little else of them but that they chatter about popular culture. Slight as Clerks was, its dirty charm and salty dialogue suggested that Smith might have the talent to travel successfully towards broader horizons.

Well, after delivering an avalanche of terrible films, the worst of which were the most ambitious, Kevin Smith has successfully returned to the characters that made him famous and has, in doing so, allowed us to draw unhappy deductions concerning the breadth of his abilities.

Clerks II begins with Dante and Randal (Brian O'Halloran and Jeff Anderson) discovering their beloved mini-market on fire. The boys relocate to Mooby's, a fast-food restaurant - its decor gloriously purple - whose bovine theme is reflected in the dubious names it bestows on its horrendous dishes. Dante, who may have had a thing with his boss (Rosario Dawson, very good), intends to marry his girlfriend (Jennifer Schwalbach, the director's wife) and move to Florida, but, there being more of Godot in the world of Clerks than Smith might acknowledge, we suspect something may happen to further detain him.

In the middle of the 1990s, Smith was one of a number of talents identified with the slacker movement. Most of the musicians and film-makers so classed demonstrated, through later ambition and industry, that they were never really as lazy as the label suggested. Smith has worked hard too, but Clerks II, probably his best film, shows that he has remained true to the ideology of slackerhood.

Ten years on, Dante and Randal can now smell middle age shuffling towards them and should, therefore, come across as faintly tragic figures. In fact, it is Dante's desperate desire to escape the fast-food counter that identifies him as pathetic. Clerks II argues, amusingly, that there are worse things than lounging around all day discussing inter-species erotica, protocol in oral sex, and the merits of Star Wars versus those of Lord of the Rings.

The bad news for Smith is the film, though very funny, suggests that he really can only direct one very precise class of story. Considering the alternatives, Clerks III might prove the least of several evils.