Movie Review : Jay & Silent Bob Reboot (2019)
Kevin Smith’s View Askew movies played an oddly important role in my life. They were crude and juvenile, but it doesn’t matter. I was crude and juvenile young man between 1994 and 2006 and felt a kinship with the directionless youth he portrayed in his films. I saw myself in his characters. They had a smart mouth, but a kind heart. Smith wisely shut down the View Askewniverse before running out of things to say and managed to keep its memory pristine for almost fifteen years. Everything was fine until Jay & Silent Bob Reboot. He just had to fuck it up.
In Jay & Silent Bob Reboot, our heroes get swindled out of their likeness rights by a shady Hollywood lawyer, who uses them to greenlight a reboot of now cult movie Bluntman & Chronic. They head to Hollywood with the intention to wreak havoc on the production, but make a stop in Chicago on the way after Jay (Jason Mewes) sees his old paramour Justice (Shannon Elizabeth) on television. She got out of jail after the events of Jay & Silent Bob Strike Back and managed to life-changing information from Jay for all these years. My guy has a kid! A socially conscious teenage daughter.
Let me give you an example that’ll help you understand why Jay & Silent Bob Reboot doesn’t work: Jay does the mangina thing from Clerks 2 like…. 90 seconds into the movie. The mangina is not funny for the sake of the mangina. It’s funny in context. In Clerks 2, Jay and Silent Bob were bored and started doing silly shit to pass time. It’s funny because it’s relatable. Doing the mangina in front of armed cops 90 seconds into a movie is just saying: “Hey remember, I did the mangina in this other movie. Please laugh”. Worst part is that in must’ve worked whenever he had a screening.
People will try harder to like your movies if they pay a ticket to see it in theaters AND also meet you on the same night.
The movie is full of hollow, soulless references to other movies of the View Askewniverse. Smith even brought by my favorite character Brodie Bruce (Jason Lee) to re-do the weird song thing from Mallrats that seemed like an inside joke then and sure isn’t any clearer today. I don’t know if these references are supposed to be commentary on the over-reliance of references in Star Wars (which Kevin Smith is a fan of), but they fill a lot of dead air and don’t remind me why I love these characters. It’s like Kevin Smith doesn’t understand why his jokes are funny.
Do I really want to get into the plot? The story behind it is heart-warming. Kevin Smith had this heart attack a couple years ago and had the idea of writing a story about his friend Jason Mewes’ fatherhood. I don’t have a problem with that. But Jay & Silent Bob Reboot swings hard at the generational clash angle between Jay and his daughter Milly (Harley Quinn Smith) and misses. I get the message that social justice is great, but it doesn’t replace having people who love you for you who are an all that. Smith is just never able to make a convincing case for it.
Also, what the fuck was that Silent Bob talking and CURSING the Ku Klux Klan scene about? Why were they even in the movie, except for a cringey editorial moment?
I get that Kevin Smith has some pent up frustration with how his movies are received and most times it’s not entirely deserved, but Jay & Silent Bob Reboot is some Adam Sandler level of I’m-just-making-movies-for-my-friends-and-I garbage filmmaking. He’s better than that. I can tell his heart is still pure, but Jay & Silent Bob Reboot is as creatively bankrupt as it gets. I was heartbroken by it. Clerks and Mallrats will always be two of my favorite movies, but I’m not sure how much more of this I can take. Because freakin’ Clerks III has been officially announced….
2.6/10
