Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back: Blu-ray disc DVD Review

Why does the film exist? Allegedly, it’s supposed to be a satire on Hollywood, an insider’s look filled with hip jokes about the movie industry, celebrities, pop culture and especially about Smith’s Jersey Chronicles, which began with 1994’s “Clerks” and went on to include 1995’s “Mallrats,” which starred Shannen Doherty as a shopoholic; 1997’s “Chasing Amy,” which starred Joey Lauren Adams and Ben Affleck as mixed-up lovers; and 1999’s “Dogma,” which starred Affleck and Matt Damon as fallen angels.

According to Smith, his latest effort, which reunites these actors in cameos that range from the uninspired to the downright ridiculous, ends the series.

Let’s hope so. The film is a mess, an unfunny wreck whose racist tirades, drug references, homophobia and jokes about oral sex and women’s genitalia are more often boring and desperate than they are provocative and smart.

Obviously, that runs counter to Smith’s objectives--with so many expletives being hurled at the screen, there’s never a moment in “Silent Bob” when it isn’t clear how much Smith wants to provoke. Yet his film is too dumb to push buttons and too self-indulgent to say anything interesting about the industry he’s only half-heartedly willing to skewer.

Purists might delight in the film’s raunch and stoner humor, but anyone seeking another “Clerks” or “Chasing Amy,” two films that prove Smith can make good movies, will likely be bewildered and disappointed.

In the film, Jay and Silent Bob (Jason Mewes and Smith) learn a movie is being made about Bluntman and Chronic, the cartoon superheros inspired by their lives. Furious they’re not getting a piece of the action, they head west to Hollywood, where, in their travels, they learn all sorts of useful things, such as how to get a free ride from a trucker or how to offend a nun in ways that can’t be printed in a family newspaper.

Miramax Studios budgeted “Silent Bob” at $20 million, a huge amount of money for an independent filmmaker whose best movie, “Clerks,” was made for $27,000. But Smith, ever the prankster who continues to view himself as the ultimate outsider, has tossed the money away to intentionally make a bad movie, one that feels like “Ulysses” crossed with “Freddy Got Fingered.” The problem? By snubbing his nose at Hollywood, he’s also snubbed his nose at audiences.

Grade: F

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