JAY AND SILENT BOB STRIKE BACK
A film review by Mark R. Leeper
CAPSULE: The running gag pair of characters from all of Kevin Smith's films gets their own movie. The gags are sporadically funny. It is more than occasionally funny for teens who are fond of scatological humor and anti-gay jokes. The plot is weak and the leads are not a particularly funny comic team. The little inside jokes and digs at other entertainment and particularly at Kevin Smith films are the best features of the film. Sadly for me they were just not funny enough to make the film worth watching. This feels like the high school skit that that the principal would not let the kids do on talent night. (And it turns out he had very good reasons.) Rating: 4 (0 to 10), low 0 (-4 to +4)
A film needs a plot. It needs characters for empathy value. It needs a story and an emotional center. If a film is just a chain of jokes it can only be so good and any entertainment value will succeed or fail based on how funny the jokes are. Kevin Smith has now made two satisfying films, CLERKS and CHASING AMY. With DOGMA he tried to make a philosophical religious comedy and mixed with a madcap romp. Peter Cook and Dudley Moore did that very successfully with their BEDAZZLED. But getting the combination to work is very hard to do right and Kevin Smith's fecal monsters in DOGMA were not the way to do it. His remaining two films, MALLRATS and his new JAY AND SILENT BOB STRIKE BACK are aimed squarely at a teenage audience. JAY AND SILENT BOB STRIKE BACK is a compendium of gay jokes, penis jokes, flatulence jokes, film pastiches, and in-jokes. How funny the jokes are will be a subjective call. For me, the vast majority of the jokes were just not very funny. There was not enough cleverness or variety. It is funny at most once or twice to accuse someone of being gay. Penis jokes work only so many times.
Showing up as minor characters in every Kevin Smith film Jay and Silent Bob were a clever pair of human running gags. They were sort of the modern equivalents of Naunton Wayne and Basil Radford, the comic duo who showed up satirizing the English middle class in several good British post-war films including DEAD OF NIGHT, THE LADY VANISHES, and PASSPORT TO PIMLICO. Jay and Silent Bob were originally supposedly typical Generation X stoners. As the series wore on they had larger and larger parts. In JAY AND SILENT BOB STRIKE BACK they are the leads.
Jay and Silent Bob (played by Jason Mewes and Kevin Smith) are chased away from the front of the convenience store where they were dealing drugs in CLERKS. This leaves them at loose ends. They are not sure what would be worthwhile to do with their lives when they hear that a comic book with characters visually modeled on them will be adapted into a movie. They decide to devote their lives to wrecking the movie or getting some of that big movie industry cash. So it is off to Hollywood to shake down the movie company and having adventures along the way. The film is mostly about their adventures on the road and when they get to Hollywood
The problem with this comedy team is that neither really pulls his weight to make the film funny. Silent Bob, being silent, can only contribute to the comedy by reacting with that very expressive face of his. This makes his piece of the comedy even less than a straight man like a Dean Martin or Bud Abbott would have. Jay has to be the comic. He could carry the load for both if he were extremely inventive. The problem is that he is not sufficiently funny. He is too bland to be the comic half and his lines just do not show any comic flair. So Jay and Silent Bob are a long way from being a successful comic team. Their starring roles and the low humor make this a comedy for those young at mind and for people who can laugh at gags they have seen before--sometimes just minutes before.
Like DOGMA before it, but definitely not like CHASING AMY, this film feels more like an amateurish skit than a real movie. Certainly neither the plot nor the characters are at all involving. They are excuses for gags, many of which still fall flat. It is DOGMA without any of the humorous theological content. The film does not offer much to an adult audience. I rate it 4 on the 0 to 10 scale and a low 0 on the -4 to +4 scale.
Mark R. Leeper
mleeper@optonline.net
Copyright 2001 Mark R. Leeper