Franchise Friday: Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back (2001)
In which Kevin Smith's mascots carry a 100-minute in-joke.
It’s usually bad form to discuss a film’s post-credit scene at the outset of a piece, but what happens at the very end of Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back is crucial to understanding its conception and its reputation, so consider this a spoiler warning for a 21-year-old film.
After all the bootchies have been snootched, the screen pulls back on a book opened to a page declaring THE END. It’s held by God, as first played by Alanis Morrissette in Dogma, who slams it shut, revealing the title: “The Askewniverse.” It’s a mind-thuddingly literal, albeit amusing, way for Kevin Smith to end one section of his career and embark on new endeavors.
At the time, this made sense. Since Clerks, Smith had written and directed several films set in a specific corner of New Jersey, populated by an interconnected cast of slackers, comic book artists and pop culture obsessives. With Chasing Amy and Dogma, he shook off the confined spaces of Clerks and Mallrats to wade into more ambitious waters, even if he still had the security blanket of Jay and Silent Bob. But when those two films were met with critical appreciation and a good-sized cult audience, it seemed like a good idea to close up the Quick Stop and do something new.
Had that, indeed, been the end of the View Askewniverwse, perhaps Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back would be more fondly remembered, a goofy goodbye made solely for Smith’s acolytes. But five years later, after Smith dropped the Jersey Girl bomb, he called the gang out of retirement for Clerks 2. Now, Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back is largely viewed as just another tired, shenanigan-fueled trip back to a well of diminishing returns.
Which isn’t completely unfair. But revisiting Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back, I was surprised to find myself laughing more than I anticipated. The film is a shaggy, overlong road trip fueled by puerile gags and blatant audience pandering. But what can I say? Some of those gags hit and, sometimes, I like being pandered to.
Jay and Silent Bob hit the road
Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back’s plot — of which there is too much — finds the duo kicked out of their spot in front of the Quick Stop after a prank at Randal’s expense. They visit Brodie at his new comic shop, and he reveals that a movie is being made about Bluntman and Chronic, the comic book heroes they inspired in Chasing Amy. A visit with Holden McNeil also teaches Jay (Jason Mewes) and Silent Bob (Smith) about the internet, specifically the then-nascent world of online film criticism. Fearing ridicule from the comment boards, Jay and Bob embark on a trip from New Jersey to Hollywood in hopes of derailing the film.
If that parade of names means nothing to you, you likely haven’t followed Smith’s filmography, and this film isn’t for you. Nearly a decade before Marvel took its first steps toward an interlocking, multi-film narrative, Smith crafted his own collection of (much less ambitious) films filled with familiar characters and shared events. While Smith isn’t the first artist to populate his movies with recurring characters, he was the first to use the internet to assemble a passionate cult around his work. Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back is a love letter to those fans; a 100-minute, raunchy, dunderheaded love letter.
Much of the film’s first act is simply a series of incidents that allow Jay and Silent Bob to bounce around to characters from Smith’s other films. Hence, starting out front of the Quick Stop (Clerks) then to the meeting with Brodie (Mallrats) and then popping in to catch up with Holden (Chasing Amy). But those are far from the film’s only meta flourishes. The film is one long in-joke, where the characters break the fourth wall to comment on the movie’s inanity, riffs abound on Scooby Doo and Star Wars, the script pokes fun at criticisms of Smith’s own career, and dozens of movies are parodied (the imdb Connections page for this movie is a hell of a thing). Actors show up multiple times playing multiple characters, sometimes even appearing as a character from another Smith movie before reappearing as themselves. Affleck, in particular, is extremely game for these shenanigans, walking away with the film’s best line (it references his forgotten horror movie, Phantoms).
Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back is like a foul-mouthed, weed-and-sex-obsessed Zucker and Zucker film. The previous films in the Askewniverse took places in varying states of reality, but even Dogma looks relatively gritty and grounded compared to the cartoon antics here, in which devils and angels show up on Jay’s shoulder, there are working lightsabers, and an entire subplot revolves around stealing a lab monkey to help a team of female jewel thieves who share a moniker I can’t repeat in a family newsletter.
And none of this is a criticism. In fact, in its weird way, Jay and Silent Bob is a step forward for Smith as a filmmaker. His camera is less static, and the film is colorful and energetic. Dogma may have given him the opportunity to indulge his comic book side and stage some larger-scale action sequences, but there are periods where Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back feels like an R-rated Chuck Jones movie (particularly during a subplot involving Will Ferrell). The cameos come fast and furious, not just from Smith stalwarts but from the likes of Carrie Fisher, Jon Stewart, Tracy Morgan, Sean William Scott, Chris Rock and others. And there’s always a groan-inducing pun, movie reference or visual gag on deck whenever another whiffs.
Is Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back stupid? Oh lord, yes. But it’s gleefully insipid, and there’s a genuine sense of goodwill that much of the cast has as they return to help Smith send off his characters. Many of these actors experienced massive career breaks because of Smith, most notably Ben Affleck and Matt Damon (in addition to casting Affleck in Mallrats and Chasing Amy, Smith produced the duo’s Oscar-winning screenplay for Good Will Hunting). And Smith’s fans loved seeing the film comment explicitly on all the connections; I saw this on opening night and laughed until my stomach hurt. Whatever flaws Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back has — and we’ll get there — this movie felt like a celebration and victory lap.
Too much of a good thing?
It’s a strange thing to revisit Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back 21 years after its release. In 2001, I was 22, and its crass humor and joyful idiocy was right in my wheelhouse. I reveled in every filthy joke and raunchy gag because I thought exploding past the boundaries of taste was the pinnacle of humor. Pushing 43, I’m able to respect the film’s energy and enthusiasm, but the laughs are more sporadic, and I often found my eyes venturing toward my phone.
Is it that Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back isn’t as funny as I thought? Or am I just too old to appreciate Smith’s perpetually juvenile humor?
It’s both.
There is, of course, truth to the fact that the film’s shock humor doesn’t work well on repeat viewings. Jay’s X-rated language may have made me laugh as a young man, but at middle-age, the jokes just feel repetitive and stale. Much of what was shocking in the early aughts is now par for the course on most streaming sites, and the constant f-bombs and and sex gags feel tiring, not clever, edgy or particularly funny. And the film traffics so heavily in homophobic and misogynistic humor that it’s embarrassing, both for Smith (who I assume has evolved as a human being) and for myself, as I remember laughing at a lot of jokes that, today, feel mean and abhorrent.
Many years and many more movies down the road, I can better see that Smith’s go-to jokes are often just not good. While it’s fun to see familiar faces pop up and realize “oh, it’s that guy from that movie,” Smith somehow doesn’t trust his very passionate audience to get the gag and often underlines it, undercutting the humor. It’s fun to see Brodie pop up; it’s not fun to hear him make a chocolate-covered pretzel gag with no other context just because that’s the thing he does in Mallrats. Smith returns to the well for jokes a lot, and by the third time the characters glanced at the camera, I wanted to yell back “we get it; you’re in a movie” (although it does make me wonder how Smith hasn’t been approached to direct a Deadpool movie). And an entire subplot about jewel thieves just feeds into his worst dude-bro, fetishizing instincts, with a cast of capable actors (Shannon Elizabeth, Eliza Dushku and Ali Larter) reduced to targets to be ogled over in a stretch of film that is never once funny (a fart joke during a jewel heist is a particular groaner).
But it’s not as if Smith has lost the touch; it’s just that with this film, he seems to want to toss in every idea he ever had, even if it means a lengthy scene devoted to one long Planet of the Apes joke. In other areas, Smith’s writing is still sharp. His insights about internet culture are funny and feel even more relevant today. And the film’s stretch on a Hollywood soundstage is a blast, allowing both for a very funny Good Will Hunting joke and a Wes Craven appearance that might be silly but actually almost redeems the Jay and Silent Bob cameo in Scream 3. At 100 minutes, it’s too much, but there’s an 80-minute version of this movie I could see working much better.
Oh, Snoogins: On Jay and Silent Bob
I’ve talked this much about the film and haven’t really mentioned its titular characters much.
Part of that is because there’s not much more to say about Jay and Silent Bob. They’re highlights in Smith’s previous films, best deployed as comic relief in small doses. But by Dogma, their appearances felt obligatory and one-note, and by the end of revisiting that film, I couldn’t imagine going back to spend 100 minutes in the company of these two.
Jay and Silent Bob are cartoons, one-note characters who don’t have an arc because the whole appeal is that they don’t grow. And Smith anticipates this criticism. Twice, the film includes references to the utter futility and silliness of crafting an entire movie around the pothead versions of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern.
One of the big questions I had going into this rewatch of Smith’s filmography was how badly Jay and Silent Bob had aged. And yes, some of it is not great. Their humor too often depends on homophobia and sexual aggressiveness, as well as a fondness for fart and poop jokes. And no one’s ever going to mistake Mewes or Smith as great actors. Throughout Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back, there are a few futile attempts to paint Jay as a sweet-hearted, but immature, young man and give him a love story of his own, and Mewes isn’t really up to carrying that.
And yet, there’s still something very funny and endearing about Jay and Silent Bob. Smith is a very funny facial actor, and his mugging always amuses me. And if Mewes isn’t a great actor, he has a very confident comedic sensibility and a great talent for line delivery. I won’t buy him as a romantic lead, but the dude can sell a punchline. And the real-life friendship between the duo lends them a very solid chemistry. Did we need a whole movie about Jay and Silent Bob? Hell no. But in the end, I’ve seen much worse dude-fronted comedies.
There are two films left in this Franchise Friday series, and I have to say I’m looking forward to them. Part of me was wondering whether this Kevin Smith revisit was a horrible idea, much of which was due to my dislike for his non-Askewniverse titles, particularly Cop Out and Red State. But while his work has flaws, I’ve very much enjoyed this trip back to Red Bank. So, we’ll be back next week to see whether Clerks 2 wears out that welcome.