Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back (dir. Kevin Smith, 2001)
Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back is not at all sophisticated. It’s not about romantic angst or religious exploration. It’s not even about conversation. This is Smith’s only Askewniverse movie that is about its plot. I guess if you make a movie about the shallowest characters in your universe, this is about what you’d get.
In Chasing Amy, Holden (Ben Affleck) and Banky (Jason Lee) were working on a comic book together. That comic book was called “Bluntman and Chronic,” about a pair of marijuana-based superheroes. Those superheroes were inspired by, and made in the likeness of, Jay and Silent Bob (Jason Mewes and Smith). In Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back, we learn that Banky (after falling out with Holden) has sold the film rights to the characters without paying Jay and Silent Bob. Incensed that they do not have money, the two of them take the the road to Hollywood. The rest of the plot: hijinks ensue.
You can tell Smith is trying to wrap things up. He lets Jay chatter continuously throughout, makes more Star Wars references (something he’s most certainly known for; in Clerks there’s a famous conversation about the Death Star, in Chasing Amy he makes several references to “the holy trilogy”), and all the jokes are fart jokes, dick jokes, weed jokes, or sex jokes. He includes characters from most of his other movies; Dante and Randall (Brian O’Halloran and Jeff Anderson) have a cameo, Jason Lee plays both Banky and Brodie, and Smith even calls in favors from Matt Damon who plays himself, and Ben Affleck who plays himself and Holden.
And the cameos are legion. Carrie Fisher, George Carlin, Will Ferrell, Judd Nelson, James Van Der Beek, Gus Van Sant, Jason Biggs, Mark Hamill, Wes Craven, Chris Rock, Shannen Doherty, and Smith’s own wife all have cameos.
The story is dumb and, the jokes are immature, but Smith still seems to be making a fun self-aware comment. Smith has, since Clerks, become something of a darling in the indie film world, and in 2001, he was clearly at the height of some sort of indie film vanguard. Yet we was also considered a hero of the geek community for constantly lionizing comic books and Star Wars in his films. And what is the film he makes during that period about? Why, about movies and fame, of course. That Smith plays a feckless character who wants some sort of validation from Hollywood perhaps speaks a lot to what he wanted Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back to be all about.
But at the same time, it’s a celebration. It’s a raunchy party for everyone to get behind. It ends with a musical number by Morris Day and The Time, and “Because I Got High” plays over the credits. This is a film that joyously lifts up all the goofier stuff from the Askewniverse, and smiles as it does so. The film is dumb and immature, yes, but it’s at least gleeful about it. It’s a film that looks at its own place in popular culture, and comments on it, coming to the conclusion that it’s all good. This was prescient, seeing as so many big-time geek blockbusters seem to be doing the same thing.
2001 was also right at the waning edge of the Hit Soundtrack era of films. Throughout the ’90s, soundtrack records were a huge part of film revenue, and Smith’s films were no exception. As such, many ’90s films, even bad ones, had awesome soundtracks. The soundtrack to Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back has been listened to often in my household, largely because my wife is a big fan of a featured band called Minibar, a Los Angeles band from England.
Eventually, the stoners get what they want, and, in a montage, beat up all the people who said something mean about them online (something Smith has, no doubt, had a fantasy about doing himself). The film is trifling, but fun. It was a good way to bid farewell to the characters.
But then, in 2006, someone had the gall to imply that Smith was stagnant and irrelevant. This led to…
