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Review: Jay & Silent Bob Strike Back

Review by STARDINGO | 08/22/2001 | 13:28:17 PM PST

Kevin Smith has finally made the movie he?s wanted to make his entire life?a movie about Kevin Smith movies.

With Jay & Silent Bob Strike Back, Kevin Smith has finally made the movie he?s wanted to make his entire life?a movie about Kevin Smith movies.

More specifically, Jay & Silent Bob is a Kevin Smith movie about people on Ain?t It Cool News talking trash about Kevin Smith movies. There?s a review of Jay & Silent Bob on Ain?t It Cool News right now, which talks about how Kevin Smith?s movie is about people on Ain?t It Cool News talking trash about Kevin Smith movies. The Talkback trash-talk comments underneath the review talk trash about how the review mentions that the Kevin Smith movie talks trash about people who talk trash about Kevin Smith movies. The fact that I?m mentioning this helps create a spiraling irony loop so vast you can see it from space.

Jay & Silent Bob Strike Back begins as Jay (Jason Mewes) and Silent Bob (Kevin Smith)?the two drug-dealing slacker side-characters from Kevin Smith?s other movies?learn that a movie is being made about Bluntman and Chronic, the comic book superheroes whose adventures were based on Jay and Bob. After reading on the Internet that a bunch of newsgroup/forum kids think their movie?s gonna suck, Jay & Silent Bob decide to go to Hollywood and put a stop to the production before their good names are forever sullied in the immortal archives of film.

From there, J&SBSB spins off into a Charlie?s Angels-like femme-fatale spy spoof, a Pee-Wee?s Big Adventure-like romp through a studio backlot, a Star Wars and Scooby-Doo send-up, and even a chimp-buddy road picture in the tradition of Every Which Way But Loose and Tony Danza?s magnum apus Going Bananas. Cameos run rampant; allusions to Kevin Smith?s innumerable side-projects reign supreme. Jay & Silent Bob is so extremely in-joke heavy that ?self-indulgent? hardly scratches the surface.

To people in the know, Jay & Silent Bob Strike Back will be funny as hell, though I doubt the ?people in the know? amount to more than a couple thousand American citizens, all told. ?People in the know? include anyone who wants to see Mark Hamill play himself in a movie, not because he?s Luke Skywalker, but because he?s the voice of the Joker on Batman: The Animated Series. ?People in the know? include anyone who found Unbreakable to be a good movie, but not quite brilliant because M. Night?s treatment of the ?secret super-villain? wasn?t quite as subtle as Alan Moore?s in Watchmen. ?People in the know? include anyone who wants to see Holden McNeel make Ben Affleck jokes, or Banky Edwards make Jason Lee jokes, or just get another glimpse of Steve-Dave, in all his glory, even if it?s just for half a half a second. ?People in the know? include anyone who?s still with me even after reading the paragraph above.

If the movie?s got one major fault (aside from its hyper-limited appeal), it?s the amount of screen time given to Shannon Elizabeth and her partners-in-crime, three jewel thieves who prance around in tight black leather as an extended McG joke. The joke is funny for about two minutes; unfortunately, Ms. Elizabeth is tied up in an ill-advised romance with Jay, so they keep showing up again and again and again.

Jay & Silent Bob is getting flak from The Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (GLAAD), who have pretty much condemned the movie because of Jay?s nonstop string of gay-bashing jokes; it?s a criticism which I can only describe as a ?rightful shame.? Yes, there are lots of gay jokes. Lots and lots of lots of them. But Kevin Smith is the perhaps the last person on Earth who should be labeled a homophobe (Chasing Amy, anyone?). Jay is a moron, but Jay is also a character in a work of fiction, and the sarcasm and satire with which Smith handles things is so obvious it would be lost only on the most dim-witted of the dim-witted twits of Twitannia. On the other hand, some of those dim-witted twits are gonna see this movie, laugh in a non-ironic way, and feel like they?ve had their twiticism validated and reinforced. The lesson? Freedom of speech should never be compromised?but perhaps freedom to be stupid should be.

If you?re like me, upon hearing the idea for this film, you said, ?A Jay and Silent Bob movie? Yeah they?re funny in small doses, but Kevin Smith must be nuts to put them on center stage. This movie is gonna suck.? And, if you?re like me, after you endure 100 minutes of Kevin Smith specifically insulting you for saying that, it?s more than likely that you?ll have to eat your words.