...a rather crude, strongly self-indulgent, and often repetitious comedy that, nonetheless, was largely amiable and good-natured.
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Look, face it, most people are either going to love this picture or hate it, right? Surprisingly, at least to me, I did neither. After I heard a cautionary remark from one of my senior film students, "Well, at least it´s not as bad as ´Freddy Got Fingered,´" I was expecting the worst. What I found instead was a rather crude, strongly self-indulgent, and often repetitious comedy that, nonetheless, was largely amiable and good-natured.
The major sin I recognized early on in the movie was that it simply wasn´t very funny. But as I keep saying, comedy is itself a funny thing. What someone like me may find wanting and dull, another person may find hilarious. Regardless of its constant flow of profanity, sex jokes, fart gags, and coarse humor, "Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back" never offended or insulted me; it mostly just bored me. Big-time fans of Jay and Silent Bob need have no fear; the movie puts the two fellows in every scene, and the two-disc DVD set is loaded with extras. Folks new to the characters, however, are advised to proceed with caution; they may be an acquired taste.
The plot is a like one of those puzzle boxes that has boxes within boxes within boxes. The story involves actors playing people who are either themselves actors or refer to actors who are themselves actors working in a film within the film. (Not even I understood that last sentence.) Actually, it´s writer, director, and costar Kevin Smith having a little fun with own previous films and taking a few stabs at Hollywood at the same time. The characters Jay and Silent Bob (Jason Mewes and Kevin Smith) are, of course, the now iconic drug-dealing slackers from Smith´s "Clerks," "Mall Rats," "Chasing Amy," and "Dogma," all of which get spoofed as the new film goes along.
But the pair were previously peripheral players, and here they´re given a whole movie to themselves. As a character in the film writes on the Internet: In small doses they´re fine, but they have trouble sustaining an entire movie. That´s supposed to be funny in the film, the kind of typically self-deprecatory humor that´s intended to show how hip the filmmakers are to themselves, but, in truth, the statement is also entirely accurate. Indeed, most of the film´s self-mockery is true, and because the filmmakers know that we know it´s true, it´s presumed to be all the more funny, but that isn´t necessarily so. After a while, all this cinematic reflexivity of winking at the camera and nudging at the viewer get tiresome and redundant. Yes, Jay and Silent Bob were funny in small doses, but, no, they aren´t as funny in big chunks.
The film begins as a "Star Wars"-inspired prologue takes us to "a long time ago, in front of a convenience store far, far away...Leonardo, New Jersey--the 70´s." Here we find the genesis of Jay and Silent Bob, a pair of babies orphaned in front of the store by a foul-mouthed mother and her quiet counterpart, and there the two children apparently grew up as permanent fixtures. They appear to spend their days selling dope and swearing. But nothing is forever, and they vacate their spot when they learn that Hollywood is turning a comic book about them, "Bluntman and Chronic," into a movie. Well, that and the convenience store owner gets a court order forcing them to leave. Anyway, the boys learn on the Net that people in chat rooms have been dissing them, and they get so riled up about it they decide to go to Hollywood and stop the movie just so folks will stop saying bad things about them. That´s the extent of it. They meet a whole lot of famous folks in cameos along the way, swear some more, and get in a few jams.
They´re told by a guy named Holden (Ben Affleck), the co-creator of the "Bluntman and Chronic" comics, that Miramax Pictures is producing the film and that Ben Affleck and Matt Damon are starring in it. Later Affleck shows up again as himself. So, off Jay and Bob go on their odyssey to Tinsel Town. One line I found funny was, not coincidentally, among their least profane, as they attempt to get on a bus for Hollywood: "Tickets? Since when did they start charging for the bus? Didn´t we used to ride this sh... to school every morning for free?" So, they hitchhike to the Coast. The first person they meet along the way is a fellow hitchhiker played by George Carlin, who advises them on how to get a ride quick. Soon after, they meet Carrie Fisher playing a nun who picks them up. However, the gag that ensues is too obscene for me to repeat; this is, after all, the Internet, and we´ve got to keep it clean. (But as Smith mentions in his commentary, among the DVD extras is an extended version of the Fisher scene that is even smuttier than the one included in the movie, and watching the dirtier version is the main purpose for buying the disc, no?)
The next major people they meet are Sissy, Missy, Crissy, and Justice (Elizabeth Dushku, Ali Larter, Jennifer Schwalbach, and Shannon Elizabeth), who provide the gratuitous sex, violence, espionage, and romance quotient in the film. Sean William Scott, known from every gross-out teen comedy of the past decade, also has a momentary role. Along the route to Hollywood and beyond, the boys meet up with a little of "Charlie´s Angels," "Mission Impossible," "Animal House" (Smith does a mean John Belushi), "The X-Files," "Planet of the Apes," "The Fugitive," "Good Will Hunting," "Scream," "E.T.," "American Pie," "House Party," and a hundred other famous films. They also meet up with, among others, Shannon Doherty, Will Ferrel, Jon Stewart, Wes Craven, Gus Van Sant, Chris Rock, Jason Biggs, James Van Der Beek, Judd Nelson, even Mark Hamill, who, along with Ms. Fisher, proves there´s life after Lucas, if not very much. The standout star, though, is an orangutan. If Eastwood could get mileage out of an ape, so can Smith.
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[release]9696[/release]