Jay and Silent Bob Reboot (2019)
dir. Kevin Smith
Rated: R
image: ©2019 Saban Films
Kevin Smith has officially given up on his film career. One of the seminal figures responsible for turning the word “independent” into a noun to describe an entire American cinema movement in the early-to-mid 1990s now can’t be bothered to come up with actual titles for his movies. The comedian/writer/podcaster, whose real career is simply being Kevin Smith, isn’t even interested in making sequels anymore. Jay and Silent Bob Reboot isn’t a sequel to Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back. This isn’t Clerks III or Mallrats 2. In Smith’s own words – because he clearly doesn’t give a shit who knows how lazy he’s become – Jay and Silent Bob Reboot is “literally the same fucking movie all over again.”
And let me tell you, he ain’t kidding. Reboot simply rehashes the same tired in-jokes from the View Askewniverse and crams in every last cameo from same in a cynical cash-grab. The humor is crass and uninspired which makes it, subsequently, hopelessly dated. The only kind thing I have to say about it is that now, finally, we have a Kevin Smith movie that isn’t openly homophobic. There are still vague references to men being uncomfortable with the idea of gay sex (only between men, of course), but at least there are no jokes that rely on the “F” word as the punchline.
Just as in Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back, the titular characters go on a cross-country road trip from New Jersey to Hollywood in order to stop a new movie about their comic book alter egos (Bluntman and Chronic) from being made. The particulars are only slightly tweaked. This time around, a slick corporate lawyer (played by Justin Long, who puts on a silly voice in an attempt to make the painfully unfunny dialog produce at least a few laughs) tricks Jay and Silent Bob into signing away their rights not only to Bluntman and Chronic, but to their actual names, Jay and Silent Bob.
The courtroom scene, in which the lawyer does his flim-flaming, is indicative of the brain-dead humor on display for the entire movie. The humor relies almost solely on stunt casting – we get Craig Robinson as the judge, Joe Manganiello as the bailiff, and Long reprising his lawyer character from Smith’s Zack and Miri Make a Porno – and everyone involved gives off the vibe that they are just fucking around for a paycheck.
Even the one thing Smith has to say with this movie is made irrelevant by the movie itself. The director is taking on reboot culture. He points a finger at huge media conglomerates that endlessly repackage proven intellectual property for a buck and the insatiable appetite of audiences for nostalgia-based entertainment. But that is exactly what Smith is trading on with Reboot. The fact that the one doing the repackaging is the actual creator instead of a faceless corporation doesn’t absolve him of doing exactly what he’s trying to satirize. It makes the attempt toothless and inconsequential.
When Smith isn’t relying on his trademark brand of crass humor that hasn’t been cutting-edge or relevant in nearly two decades, he fills the rest of the gaps with lazy pop-culture references. I used to have a friend who prided himself on the number of pop-culture references he could cram into his daily conversations. He and Kevin Smith were made for each other.
When Jay recreates the Goodbye Horses scene from The Silence of the Lambs in Clerks II, I laughed heartily. Smith goes back to that well in Reboot, and I chuckled. When Smith, who plays Silent Bob, performs the entire Alec Baldwin scene from Glengarry Glen Ross – in the middle of a KKK rally, no less – I was bewildered. It comes out of nowhere, lasts far too long, and the cultural reference is never more sophisticated than to provoke a response of, “Hey, I love that thing! And Kevin Smith loves that thing, too!”
It is nice to see a few familiar faces pop up in the cameos throughout the movie; I’m not a completely unfeeling monster, after all. One involves an actor reprising his role from Dogma, the best film Kevin Smith has ever, and I’m becoming increasingly convinced, will ever, make. One sequence near the end of the film was the only one that put a genuine, involuntary smile on my face for its entire duration. It acts as a mini-reunion for Smith’s Chasing Amy and adds a satisfying coda to that story.
Jay and Silent Bob Reboot is barely a movie. Kevin Smith and Jason Mewes – who have played Jay and Silent Bob together on screen now for a quarter-of-a-century – are taking the project from theater to theater around the country on a roadshow tour. Before screening the movie, they give a talk and engage in a Q-and-A session with the audience. My hunch is that the roadshow is the real motivation behind making Reboot. As enjoyable as that might be for hardcore fans of the View Askewniverse, Jay and Silent Bob Reboot solidifies my opinion of those iconic characters: they’re good for a laugh, but are hardly strong enough to support their own movie, let alone two.
Why it got 1 star:
- From one Gen-Xer to another, Kevin, you’re movie is exceptionally lazy. In that way, it exudes a true slacker sensibility. Seriously, though, Jay and Silent Bob Reboot is painfully unfunny and relies solely on stunt casting and in-jokes for any sort of entertainment value.
Things I forgot to mention in my review, because, well, I'm the Forgetful Film Critic:
- Kevin Smith’s tweak to Netflix and Chill: Hulu and Hump. OK, I’ll admit it, I giggled at that.
- The music score by James L. Venable is insufferable. It’s like someone told him, “Look, this movie isn’t funny. Can you add a music bed under the whole thing that exudes zaniness, so maybe people will think it’s funny?”
- I didn’t even mention in the main review that Smith, as with his last couple of films, cast his daughter, Harley Quinn, in a starring role here. She turns out to be Jay’s daughter, and Jay has to deal with what it means to become a father, mirroring, I guess, Smith’s own real-life feelings on the topic? Amid everything else going on in the movie, I never really connected with that theme.
- Looking at my notes, in addition to the Glengarry Glen Ross reference, The Silence of the Lambs reference, and countless others, there was also a Game of Thrones and Blue Velvet reference. I can’t even remember what the GOT reference was, and I believe Blue Velvet was the Dennis Hopper “I’ll fuck anything that moves!” line, which Smith has referenced in other movies. It tells you how deadening the constant references were that I can’t even fully remember these two, which both riff on things that I love.
- I did a little revisit/catching up with Kevin Smith movies in anticipation of Reboot, and I think I finally discovered that I’m just not a Kevin Smith fan. I revisited Clerks (it has it’s moments, but I now feel justified in 15-year-old Josh turning it off half-way through in 1995; at the time, though, I wouldn’t have been able to offer a criticism more cogent than “it’s dumb and the acting is bad”), Chasing Amy (this one has grown the most on me, but it has aged very poorly), Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back (this movie has aged incredibly poorly in the 20 years since its release), and Dogma (Smith’s masterpiece; the one movie of his that I love). I watched, for the first time, Clerks II (atrocious).
Close encounters with people in movie theaters:
- You could tell who the hardcore Smith fans were in the audience. They laughed uproariously from start to finish. Over all, a well behaved audience. Besides the laughter, which is totally appropriate during a comedy, I don’t remember any phones popping out or conversations starting up.