Again, very surprised that I ended up liking this as much as I did. Had some moments here and there where the jokes felt like they were written today in terms of things going on in the world.

[5.0/10] *Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back* is Kevin Smith’s most indulgent film. It is his least substantive film. And for young fans who admired his “slacker with a brain” vibe up to this point, it was his most disappointing film. At one point in the film, a skeptical internet commenter declares that “Jay & Silent Bob only work in small doses, if at all. They don’t deserve their own movie.” And while the inclusion is tongue in cheek, having watched their feature-length debut, I’m hard-pressed to disagree. *J&SBSB* is so rife with fundamental problems that it’s hard to single out just one as the most significant, but that may very well be the biggest issue with the film. I like Jay & Silent Bob! Jay’s motor-mouthed vulgarity mixed with Silent Bob’s Chaplin-esque mugging is a recipe that's done Smith well since [*Clerks*](https://trakt.tv/comments/794234). But they’re a side dish, not a main course. Neither character has the depth to sustain a feature-length story, and their antics start to wear thin over the course of 100+ minutes of the same routine. The Quick Stop’s resident dealers do best when they have a straight man to bounce off of, someone to roll their eyes at the duo, or chuckle at the absurdity of their antics. Without that, the pair are untethered and comedically aimless, unable to generate the same kind of laughs in a movie where *everyone* is a cartoon character, and lacking the depth to be legitimate protagonists. The choice to make them the stars here is emblematic of a blend of fanservice and creator indulgence that pervades *J&SBSB*. The weedy duo basically became the mascots for the Askewniverse, and so putting them front and center, whether they can sustain the film or not, feels like a sop to the fans. It doesn’t make for good viewing, but the movie’s most forgivable excess is the way it plays as a valentine to the fans who’d enjoyed Smith’s oeuvre since 1994. It’s neat to see Dante and Randal in color for the first time outside of a music video (give or take the animated series). It’s fun to see Brodie giving up his late night fortunes to run his own comic book shop. It’s low-key heartwarming to see Alyssa looking back on her relationship in [*Chasing Amy*](https://trakt.tv/comments/806311), or Banky admitting his sexuality and ending up with Hooper, or God herself closing the book on the universe a la [*Dogma*](https://trakt.tv/comments/806942). It’s nice to see Smith pay off the monkey-theft gags he seeded in [*Mallrats*](https://trakt.tv/comments/797540) and *Clerks: The Animated Series*. Hell, arguably the film’s best scene is Holden patiently guiding the two titular knuckleheads like so many other Askewniverse characters who’ve suffered these fools gladly. At the same time though, most of the cameos are cheap, and a lot of it feels like Smith and company playing the hits. Dante’s not even supposed to be here today. Brodie’s ready to give the stink palm. We even get another “You tell ‘em, Steve-Dave!” Some of these moments have minor twists to them. And some indulgence is acceptable in what was meant to be the grand finale of Smith’s storytelling universe. (Even if Smith would go on to make four more Askewniverse films and countless other Silent Bob cameos.) But there’s a whole lot more “Hey, remember that thing?” to *J&SBSB* than there is anything new or novel. To the point, the movie often seems like an elaborate excuse for Smith to hang out with his friends and past collaborators. Beyond the regulars like Jason Lee and Ben Affleck who’d become staples of Smith’s crew, and the scads of characters from Smith’s past installments who pop up once more, there’s a surfeit of return engagements. George Carlin is back. Matt Damon is back. Chris Rock is back. Shannen Doherty is back. And that's all apart from Smith casting his wife in a small but significant role. Again, I like the vast majority of these people! The cast list is an embarrassment of riches. But at the same time, that approach leaves *J&SBSB* feeling more like a family reunion or a victory lap than a legitimate movie. Even if you can separate all that out as a fair concession to the supposed last hurrah of the Askewniverse, the film also plays like Smith living out his big screen fantasies. He gets to share a scene with Carrie Fisher after all the Star Wars references that suffused his films. He gets to be shot at by Judd Nelson after including allusions to the actor in multiple movies. He gets to dance with Morris Day and the Time. He gets to skulk around a thinly-veiled version of the Bat Cave and have a lightsaber fight with fucking Luke Skywalker. It’s hard to blame the writer-director for all of this. If I had studio money and my childhood heroes wanting to work with me, I might do much the same. But it doesn’t make for a good movie. Neither does seemingly succumbing to the worst conventions of early 2000s big screen comedies. It is telling that *J&SBSB* features no fewer than three stars of *American Pie* because the film feels strangely indebted to the comic stylings of that and other comedy films of the era that had all of the raunch but none of the heart, wit, or cleverness Smith managed to infuse into even his broadest, most ridiculous flicks. Suffice it to say, *J&SBSB* is embarrassingly of its time. The pop culture references are cheap and obvious, rather than fun or organic. The characters are all broad and over-the-top, rather than outlandish but human. And the jokes all go for the cheap seats, or the middle school bleachers, instead of the self-consciously “dumb movies for smart people” approach he’d taken in the past. The movie is not a total desert of humor, to be sure. Will Ferrel is funny. Chris Rock is funny. Tracy Morgan is funny. Against all odds, the comic duo of James Van Der Beek and Jason Biggs is funny. If you just wind some of these great performers up and let them go, you end up with a decent number of good laughs from sheer force of will. And in stray moments with fourth wall-breaking asides, showbiz satires, drug dealer unions, and amusing juxtapositions, you can catch glimpses of the comic spark Smith brought to all of his projects. But while dick and fart jokes, easy 1990s homophobia, and casual misogyny were always a garnish to Smith’s cinematic entrees, here they are the main course and then some. There is no instance of cutting the cheese too childish, no accusation of homosexuality too off-color, no declaration of Jay’s horniness too stupid to pass up. Extended, painful, forced gags about “clit” and “labia” as acronyms go on forever. Gone is the cleverness and sense of real conversation that bolstered Smith’s more transgressive dialogue, and in its place is a tidal wave of sophomoric and scatlogical humor that rarely amounts to more than “boners and flatulence exist -- isn’t that hilarious?” And yet, somehow, despite remarkable maturity and evolution across his first four films, Smith’s treatment of women has sunk to worse than when he started. *J&SBSB* is the male-gaziest movie the director’s ever made, with scads of gratuitous scenes that only exist to titillate young men who didn’t otherwise have an internet connection circa 2001. Justice, Jay’s love interest, is somehow even less-developed and less interesting than Brandi in *Mallrats*. And the reasons she tolerates Jay for more than thirty seconds, let alone falls in love with him, are utterly mystifying. This is affection-by-fiat and girl-as-trophy to the extreme. It’s part and parcel with the sense of this movie as almost completely empty. Even *Mallrats*, Smith’s flimsiest film, has *something* to say about growing up and getting your shit together. If you squint, you can see the barest outline of Jay learning to control himself for someone he cares about, and a mild satire of the then-embryonic Internet Commenter Industrial Complex. But it’s all thin gruel, and plainly not the point of the movie. The point is to let Jay and Silent Bob take center stage for a little less than two hours, cobble a bunch of gags together, remind the audience of better films, and call it a day. This is little more than a live action cartoon, with the same dadaist, anything goes approach Smith brought to *Clerks: The Animated Series* only louder and dumber. The grand irony of the movie is that it brings back so many familiar, superficial elements from Smith’s past films, but leaves behind the sense of realism amid absurdity, the witty dialogue, and the raw humanity that made them great. At the end of the day, I *want* to excuse *Jay & Silent Bob Strike Back* as its creator’s indulgence, an excuse for him to reunite with familiar faces, ply the audience with nostalgia and empty calories, and pat this small universe of characters on the back one (supposedly) last time. I *want* to ascribe its hollow early 2000s gags as studio interference. I *want* to imagine that I’d host what amounts to a big party with my friends on the studio’s dime in lieu of making a good movie. Not just because I like Smith and his work, but because the alternative is much worse. Otherwise, it would mean this cinematic hodge-podge is the sign of a filmmaker who’d grown so much, only to deeply and miserably regress.

<b><i>20th Anniversary</b></i> <blockquote>"Don't fuck with the Jedi Master, son."</blockquote> Adding this to another movie I wish I had seen when it came out! At first I was worried this movie was going to be boring because it starts off that way but by the end I was enjoying all the cameos and quotes. I can see how this had a big following and yeah it can be dumb, but it was great for that era.