Film Review: Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back (2001)
When a film maker makes truly impressive debut expectations for next films tend to be unrealistically high and often each subsequent film becomes more disappointing than the previous. M. Night Shyamalan is often taken as as best known example of this phenomenon. Another could be found in career of Kevin Smith whose celebrated low budget black-and-white comedy Clerks was followed by series of films in which Smith’s large ambition and larger budgets failed to match what would audience see on the screen. That goes for his fifth film, 2001 comedy Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back.
Like most of Smith’s films, Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back is set in View Askewniverse, fictional universe introduced in Clerks. Jay (played by Jason Mewes) and Silent Bob (played by Smith), two small-time marijuana dealers whose presence connects those films are here the protagonists. They learn that Bluntman and Chronic, comic book created by their friends Holden McNeill (played by Ben Affleck) and Banky Edwards (played by Jason Lee), based on them, is to be adapted into Hollywood film. Worried that the film might taint their image and they won’t get royalties, they decide to travel to Los Angeles and try doing something about it. Along the way they meet group of militant animal rights activists that includes Justice (played by Shannon Elizabeth), girl to whom Jay becomes attracted. Group’s raid on laboratory brings attention of federal Wildlife Marshall Willenholly (played by Will Farrell) who begins to pursue Jay and Silent Bob.
Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back can be best described as a film that Kevin Smith made less for critics or general audience and more for his most loyal fans. The plot and many of its details are incomprehensible to anyone who haven’t seen previous four films. Many characters from Clerks, Mallrats and Chasing Amy appear in this film and sometimes actors who have played them play multiple characters. Smith adds fan service not only to fans of his films, but to also to fans of Star Wars by having Mark Hamill playing himself in cameo role in the scene near the end. Another sort of fan service comes in the animal liberation group, which are played in beautiful and scantily clad women, very much like protagonists of Charlies’ Angels. All that content, however, can’t hide the fact that the quality of humour varies and that Smith uses road film template in order to hide thinness of plot. Subplot involving liberated animals, stolen diamonds and federal policeman played by Will Farrell is very weak. Some of the jokes even got Smith into trouble with gay rights organisations over alleged homophobia. Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back is, however, mostly entertaining film although it could be properly enjoyed only by those who watched and appreciated Kevin Smith’s work beforehand.
RATING: 5/10 (++)
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I'm gonna be honest, I loved this movie back in the day even though I was (and still am) the farthest away from this lifestyle depicted in Clerks, Mallrats, Chasing Amy and especially Jay and Silent Bob. But it was peak American 90s Grunge culture that had a melancholic undertone to it, I couldn't quite put my finger on then, but certainly now, when we see the trajectory of that country from the 90s to now.
There is a feeling of "not belonging anymore". Maybe I'm projecting and Kevin Smith would not consciously have made those films that way. But the undercurrent of American culture and the way, American society was headed, is perfectly encapsulated in his films of that era. A teenager myself entrenched in American culture, I could somehow relate and was almost obsessed with movies like this.
Not Jay and Silent Bob obviously, which was just a funny movie about two losers, but the aforementioned films in that series.