Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back
I will always have an affection for Kevin Smith, and especially, his comic creations, Jay and Silent Bob. If you had told me that after my first time watching his first couple of features, “Clerks” and “Mallrats,” I would have told you that was insane. But in 2018, my life has been influenced by Smith in numerous ways that go beyond just enjoying the man’s films. It was at a 2015 stand-up show with Smith in Atlanta when I heard him talking about his podcasting, and I was inspired to first do the Sonic Cinema Podcast. At that show, my best friend Ronnie and I broke out the Jay and Silent Bob cosplay that we had donned so popularly at DragonCon over the years.
Kevin Smith was one of those filmmakers I bonded with Ronnie over when our friendship began proper around the time “Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back” hit theatres in 2001, and closed the book on Smith’s View Askewniverse…at least until “Clerks II” in 2006. We enjoyed the vulgar laughs, the “Star Wars” references, and the jovial nature of the films. For a while, I think both of us would have put Smith as one of our favorite filmmakers, and even now, he’s still kind of up there for me, although as I’ve watched more movies, other filmmakers have elevated past him. Movies like “Cop Out” and “Yoga Hosers” haven’t really kept my affection for him as a filmmaker at a peak, but that early work, which culminated in “Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back,” still engages me as a fan the same way it came to almost 20 years ago.
“Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back” puts a lot of different types of film into the blender of an old-fashioned road movie, as the titular comic relief, played by Jason Mewes and Smith, respectively, takes center stage, and hits the road to Hollywood after Dante and Randell- the put-upon clerks from Smith’s first movie- take out a restraining order against the drug dealers so that they can no longer just stand out in front of the Quick Stop convenience store. Why do they go out to Hollywood? Well, it turns out that Bluntman and Chronic, the comic book created by “Chasing Amy’s” Holden (Ben Affleck) and Banky (Jason Lee), is being made into a movie by Miramax Films, and they aren’t seeing any money from the likeness rights deal they made for the comic, and they gots to get that muthafucking movie money. When they find out that people are shit-talking their comic alter egos (also named Jay and Silent Bob) on the internet, however, in the run-up to production starting in three days, their focus shifts from getting money to getting people to stop posting about them online.
In light of a new and destructive force pitting “fans” against filmmakers that has risen up with social media, “Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back” feels every bit as relevant to the tenor of movie discussion online as it did back in 2001, although, instead of just posting on comment and message boards, Twitter and Instagram allow people to directly go after the person, and it’s resulted in some truly toxic behavior being front-and-center in any attempts to discuss films on the internet. Watching it now, the comeuppance Smith has prepared for Jay and Silent Bob’s trolls at the end of the film- set to “Kick Some Ass” by Stroke 9- feels even more appropriate than it did then for people who have gone to lengths to drive actors away from social media altogether. While I certainly wouldn’t want any of my favorite filmmakers and actors to go to the lengths Jay and Bob did in this film, seeing someone like Rian Johnson post a response like Jay does at Mooby’s would be absolutely worth it. If there’s any part of this movie that has aged particularly well, it’s the stuff regarding Jay and Bob vs. the internet.
If there’s any part of this movie that HASN’T aged well, it’s the frequent use of the term “gay,” and all the homosexual vulgarity, that Jay, in particular, traffics in over the course of the film’s 104 minutes. I still enjoy the film thoroughly, but with almost two decades of distance after its release, I completely understand why GLAAD had issues with the film. While I’m not a particular fan of being overly politically-correct in terms of speech, and yes, most of the more derogatory comments are coming from a character even Smith acknowledges is an idiot, there’s some real limitations to Smith’s humor in this movie, with the bite and warmth that “Chasing Amy” and “Dogma” matured all but gone for the sake of a barrage of dick and fart jokes goosed with frequent allusions to giving other men blowjobs that occasionally allow for funny moments- George Carlin’s “Rules of the Road” head, a brief bit of visual business for Jay, and “Oooh, what a lovely tea party.”- but doesn’t really hold water now. With a new Jay and Silent Bob movie down the pipeline from Smith in the next year or two, I’m very curious to see what type of Jay and Bob we get now.
This is just a silly movie, when you boil down to it, and that’s part of what I really enjoy about it still. Centering the film around Jay and Silent Bob, who were usually brief scene-stealers up to this point (although he did get them more involved in “Dogma”), was a move that shouldn’t work as well as it does, but Smith understands how to build a story around these characters, and what can be appealing about them. Mewes and Smith successfully make these two fools an entertaining center of the film, and I’m not going to lie, the sweet chemistry Mewes has with Shannon Elizabeth as Justice, one of a group of four jewel thieves the duo meet along the way, still holds steady to this day. Elizabeth didn’t get very many good opportunities to do genuinely funny and engaging work, and she makes the most of the chance Smith gives her here while also being self-aware enough to let him objectify her and her criminal cohorts (Eliza Dushku, Ali Larter, and Smith’s real-life wife, Jennifer Schwalbach Smith) at certain times, as well. I don’t know that his comedic chops are in good form in this film, but his abilities as a storyteller are actually in good shape, here; if not, the film would probably be unwatchable, right now.
The pictures of Ron and I as Jay and Silent Bob throughout this review are shared not just because I love the time we have put in as the characters over the years, but because it’s a testament to our fandom of these characters that we went with a coincidental visual similarity between Smith and I and ran with it. Regardless of whether I’m as big a fan of Smith’s work now as I was then, there’s a part of me that will always feel a connection to it, and to him, whether I revisit his films frequently or not.
I’m certainly not going to shit talk him on the internet, though. I know, because of this movie, what happens if I do.
