Indie film-maker/podcaster/stoner Kevin Smith released a new movie via roadshow last year that finally came to streaming this week. So I rented Jay and Silent Bob Reboot on iTunes, hoping (again) this would be a return to quality. Something I keep hoping for each time I watch one of his movies… but finding he never touches the good ol’ days like with Clerks, Chasing Amy, and even Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back.
So this is a sequel to Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back that finds stoner buddies Jay and Silent Bob getting into legal trouble over a marijuana dispensary in New Jersey. They are cleared of those charges but find out that a Hollywood studio has licensed their names as part of a reboot of the Bluntman and Chronic movie that was at the heart of the original film. Angry about a reboot, they vow to travel to Hollywood once again and stop the movie… having a series of wacky and wild adventures, meeting Jay’s previously unknown love child (played by Kevin Smith’s daughter), and learning valuable life lessons along the way.
This is sadly another really bad and dumb comedy… and, to be fair, I think it’s well aware of it. The only people it will really amuse are the people already in the know about Kevin Smith’s life and the history of the franchise. And I think Smith hopes those people are stoned. I’m not and I got most of the jokes and I was mostly unamused. But maybe I’m just a grumpy old stick in the mud. Who knows? All I can say for sure is that the jokes are easy and somehow keep missing opportunities to actually be funny. And they are poorly edited and over-acted in a mugging-too-hard-at-the-camera sort of way. It’s trying… but it’s a bit too try-hard.
All that said, I did chuckle more than once. There are doses of actual comedy in the flick… it’s scattershot and random and you might disagree that there are more… or less. But I can’t lie and say I wasn’t occasionally amused.
That said, one of the things it randomly gets right are all the many, many celebrity cameos. Ben Affleck, Matt Damon, Melissa Benoist, Val Kilmer, Chris Hemsworth, Jason Lee, Shannon Elizabeth, Joe Manganiello, Rosario Dawson, Justin Long, Joey Lauren Adams, and more show up to support their old buddy Kevin Smith. Probably the funniest was Chris Hemsworth… continuing to prove he should do comedies. Probably the most heartfelt was Ben Affleck reprising his role from Chasing Amy (one of Smith’s best films). In fact, the writing in this relatively short sequence is so much better than the rest of the film. It proves that Kevin Smith can still write intelligent, insightful, very human dialog. It’ll be a real treat to fans of Chasing Amy. I wish more of that from the writer/director and less of this.
So, yeah, I can only recommend this to long-time Kevin Smith fans since that’s all its written for. But even then, only if you want to see all his flicks since otherwise this is mostly pretty bad. Some real shining little gems of moments though… but mostly bad. Oh, and I guess I can recommend it to stoners if you love stoner comedies (Hey kids, it’s Redman and Method Man!). Everyone else… if it was ever even on your radar… just don’t bother.
Score: 70