FILM REVIEW - JAY AND
SILENT BOB
STRIKE BACK
The follow up to Clerks, Mallrats and Chasing Amy, Dogma, etc and every
bit as funny as it's predecessors - Director Kevin Smith has surpassed himself here - the audience I saw it with were really going for it and some gags were funny enough to gain applause as well as hysterical laughter. The format is basically road movie, and takes up often directly from threads in the preceding films,. The plot has Jay & Bob
arrested when the video store guy in Clerks has had enough of them and does what he should have done years before, grassing them up to the
s, - ordered to stay away from the stores, the duo then discover that their old superhero comic has been signed up at Miramax Studios without
them being cut in for any money on the deal, - worse, comic fans on the Internet (Jay "What's the fucking internet?" have been bad mouthing the
project before it has even started, calling them "cheap rate Cheech and Chong meet Bill and Ted", fearing worse once the film comes out they set
off to Hollywood to smash the project, When asked who'd even want to watch a crap film about their adventures they stare silently right into the
camera.
Obstacles come thick and fast, 1/. The greyhound bus driver wants paying, and they lament the loss of the free buses they had in their school
days, 2/. Trying to hitchhike they are impressed by an old man's placard promising drivers 'head' throughout the rides he gets, expressing
disgust they have him telling them he wrote 'the book' on hitching with blow jobs, - picked up moments later by a nun, (Carrie Fisher) who
talks about the good book, they assume it's the same book and attempt to oblige her, finding themselves dumped - 3/. Lamenting that he feels like
he is in a cartoon, Jay and
silent Bob are picked up by the Mystery Machine, where they get everyone stoned (including Scooby) and imagine a wild fantasy orgy with Daphne and Thelma, 4/. Trouble really starts when they take a ride with some animal liberation girls who sweet talk them into rescuing a monkey from a research lab, (actually a cover for the girls to rob a diamond bank nearby) (itself a very funny spoof on Charlie's Angels and Entrapment) Bob & Jay steal a scene stealing baby orang utan, and get chased by cops and a local wildlife preserve sheriff who thinks he's a real tough guy - superb scene when he and the cops catch and surround the bus they have escaped on, on the edge of the State of Utah, - pinching a school blazer and beret off a kid the heroes dress the Orang as their own love child and make moving speeches about Utah's anti-homophobic policies of live and let live before escaping - in the middle of planning the search of the other bus passengers, the sheriff suddenly
exclaims - "Shit. I'm a fool. That was them wasn't it?" (Lots of nodding heads all around. )
Great send up of the Dam scene from Fugitive followed by their arrival in Hollywood as the orang is kidnapped by a movie animal trainer - Jay
asks locals if they know anywhere roundabouts where films are made, and asked by a hooker if he wants anything really nasty from her, Jay reels
off a whole list of deprived wishes until she resigns from the job on the spot in disgust. Finding the actors who are playing them, (the pie kid in American Pie and a lad from Dawson's Creek they initially make friends with them (Pie guy rants off a list of his films and adds in some anger "but
everyone just remembers me for fucking a pie...." Later arrested in mistake for Jay & Bob the Creek guy yells at the cops "You can't do this to
me. I'm a teen idol " as his friend moans " You can't do this to me. I'm the pie fucker" The Orang invades the set of a Scream sequel ending up unmasked as the villain as the heroine of those films shouts at the director "A monkey!You're not even trying any more are you?"
Posing as actors pretending to be themselves the heroes gatecrash Chris Rock's film set and don their Mallrats superhero gear, to face a
villain who is barely recognizably Mark Hamill, a heavy handed (arms like a Kenny Everett character called Brother Lee Love) and a light sabre -
with Bob as Vader and Jay as Darth Maul, shouts of " George Lucas is gonna sue someone) Hamill loses a hand, moaning Oh no, not again,. as
the fight gets complicated by the girls and the police who have been in pursuit clash with the action, - result ultimately is the success of
the film, Bob and Jay get a good deal, and use the money to fly round the world personally visiting the people who wrote so rudely about them in
chat-rooms, to start kicking their heads in .... just so dammed funny - go see go see first chance you get.
Arthur Chappell