Plot Details: This opinion reveals minor details about the movie's plot.

“Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back” can in no way give you a communicable disease. That’s the good news. The bad news is that it’s a terrible, stupid, criminally un-funny movie that is sure to disappoint even the most faithful Kevin Smith fans. On the other hand, there’s a decent chance that I could be totally wrong, and the lower-than-lowbrow humor will strike a chord with America and be the runaway hit of the summer. But I’m betting it won’t.

“J&SBSB” is the last (I really hope so, at least) in the “New Jersey” series of films by writer/director Kevin Smith (Clerks, Mallrats, Chasing Amy, Dogma). Jay & Bob are, as always, hanging out and dealing drugs in front of the Quick Stop convenience store. However, once they discover that a movie is being made about their cartoon alter-egos Bluntman & Chronic, they go on a quest to get paid. Their first stop is to the artist who created the characters, Holden McNeil (Ben Affleck). In perhaps the film’s funniest sequence, Holden explains to them what the internet is, and more specifically, what chat rooms are. He shows them a film chat room site that has people ripping apart the Bluntman & Chronic film, even before it’s been made.

Jay & Bob suddenly shift their gears from wanting to get paid for the film to wanting production stopped. They figure that it’s way worse to have snot-nosed kids talking smack about them on the web, so the only way they can figure out to stop it is to shut down production. It’s off to Hollywood for them, to shut down the production of the film that starts in a few days. And so we have it, the beginning of the road flick, which ordinarily, is a tried and true formula for comedy success (see Vacation, Tommy Boy, etc.). However, this is where J&SBSB really goes downhill, and there’s still another 100 minutes left.

On the road, the guys run into practically every actor who’s ever been in a Kevin Smith film, starting with George Carlin teaching the boys a gross lesson about hitchhiking. I won’t give it away, but it becomes clear at this point that as far as crassness goes, this film goes way beyond any of Smith’s other films, and that’s no minor feat. Things really get stupid when they run into a foursome of beautiful jewel thieves, masquerading as animal rights activists. The leader of their crew is played by Shannon Elizabeth (American Pie), and she makes one thing painfully clear at every moment during this movie: if she’s not topless, masturbating in front of a webcam, she’s got no business being on screen. She’s terrible.

In fact while I’m on the subject of terrible, I need to voice a major complaint about all of Smith’s films, but especially this one. The dialog that Smith writes is often witty and sharp, but he insists on employing actors who simply cannot pull it off. Many, many times during this film, we hear what might be clever lines delivered in a lackluster, unbelievable way. It gets really old, really quick. People like Chris Rock might be truly hilarious while delivering their own material, but seem to fail when trying to “act”.

The other major complaint people are going to have about this film is its level of bathroom humor. “There’s Something About Mary”, “American Pie”, “Road Trip”—forget it, this movie leaves all of them in the dust. There’s constant dick jokes, homosexual slamming, and graphic gross-out descriptions of sexual acts you don’t want to know about. Readers who’ve read my film reviews know that I’m about as far away from being a prude as is humanly possible, but that doesn’t mean that I don’t tire of stupid, gross, pseudo-shock value one-liners. People who have a problem with any of these issues (and believe me, many groups will), should skip this one with a doubt.

Having said all off this, there certainly are a few funny scenes and worthwhile cameos. In one scene, Ben Affleck & Matt Damon start razzing each other about the bad movies they’ve made, and it really works. Tracy Morgan from Saturday Night Live has a 2 minute cameo as a card-carrying Los Angeles drug dealer who the guys run into, and he steals the show. Another SNL player, Will Ferrell, plays a wannabee FBI agent who’s really a wildlife Marshall. Sure, he’s kind if funny, but he could have been so much funnier. Many of the characters are like that—you feel like they’re gonna bust out and be really funny at any moment, but they never do.

There’s also some painfully lame cameos that are just filler, and unnecessary filler at that. By the end of this film, you’ll be so ready for the damn thing to be over, that the final scene might drive you to violence. Much like crappy films from the 80’s, the end of this film features the whole gang going to a –you guessed it—a Morris Day & The Times concert. Huh? Yes, you read that right. I don’t know how the deal went down, perhaps Miramax owed Morris Day, maybe Morris Day owed Kevin Smith, but in any case, it makes absolutely no sense, and goes on forever.

Sadly, the overwhelming impression I was left with after watching “J&SBSB”, was one of apathy from Kevin Smith’s standpoint. Could he really have found this funny? Was he trying at all? Or did he rattle something off over a weekend to fulfill an obligation to Miramax? I don’t really know, but I do know that this movie is a total disappointment. I’m sure some die-hard Smith fans will love it, but for the rest of us that are going into the theater with no predispositions, there’s gonna be hell to pay.

On the Splitscale: 4/10


Recommended: No

Suitability For Children: Not suitable for Children of any age

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