Summary:
After getting scammed out of their royalties, Jay and Silent Bob travel to Hollywood to stop a “Bluntman and Chronic” film.
My Thoughts:
I generally like Kevin Smith (“Clerks, “Mallrats”) movies even though I don’t think he’s ever made a perfect (or even great) movie, except for maybe “Dogma.” Kevin Smith in many ways feels like a modern day John Waters (“Multiple Maniacs”), only, with less gross out humor and more stoner humor. I’ve found that with movies like “Clerks”, “Dogma”, and even “Chasing Amy” he actually has a message he’s trying to get across, even if it’s buried under mounds of stupidity.
It had been a long time since I had seen this particular entry into Smith’s View Askewniverse, but after the “Jay and Silent Bob Reboot” trailer dropped a few weeks back, I decided to revisit this film, and let me say that much of the humor has not aged well. While this film does have moments of completely self-deprecating meta-humor, even to the point of addressing the inevitable negative reviews given to it by cinephiles on the Internet, I just couldn’t, for the life of me, find this movie to be funny. Smith’s point in making this film was to be a satire on Hollywood, and in a way he succeeds; this film does point out a lot of things that are wrong with the industry in Hollywood, but it also epitomizes a lot of them.
I think the most major thing to change between my previous viewing of this film and my viewing last night is the world’s approach to humor. I have no problem with the occasional mean-spirited or even inappropriate comedy (“Seven Psychopaths”, “The Death of Stalin”), but I feel like most of the time even jokes told at other peoples’ expenses are satirical. This film doesn’t even try to be clever in the way that it approaches mean-spirited jokes. Saying something is gay repeatedly isn’t funny, nor is over-sexualizing and dumbing down woman; it’s lazy and pathetic. I would say probably 90% of the humor in this film is fart jokes, obvious sexual innuendoes, and pointless gay shaming. If that’s the kind of sophomoric humor you enjoy, maybe this movie will hit the right nerve, for myself, I found it to be more irritated than anything else.
I wont say this movie is a complete wash; there are scenes that I actually enjoyed. I thought some of the cameos were pretty great, particularly George Carlin’s (“Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure”). Will Ferrell (“Holmes and Watson”) gave a rather funny performance, but his character in this is the exact same as every other character he’s played in every other film he’s ever been in. The scene where Scooby Doo and the gang showed up is funny for a moment, and then it becomes rather stupid pretty quick. Mark Hamil’s (“Star Wars: The Last Jedi”) cameo used jokes that all felt incredibly obvious, but the gravitas with which he played his character kind of made it work for me. I did think some of the meta-humor worked pretty well, but after a while, when Smith continuously breaks the fourth wall to look directly at the camera, I found myself growing tired of it; hitting the same nail on the head only drives it into the wall so far, and then after that, you’re just damaging the structure of the wall with each swing, and Smith took plenty of swings.
Verdict:
Other than “Yoga Hosers” and “Jersey Girl” I’ve seen everything that Smith has made, and out of all those that I’ve seen I honestly think this is his weakest film. This is a stoner comedy with nothing for anyone but stoners. There’s a ton of jokes that I would consider to be in poor taste in the post #MeToo era, and most of those jokes weren’t that funny to begin with. Smith does have something to say sometimes, but he certainly didn’t deliver anything of value with this film.
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