The best thing someone could do to Jay and Silent Bob would be to dope them up good and proper, drive them to a secluded New Jersey forest, shoot them in the head and bury the bodies. Their time is up. They've had their shot. This new film has just pissed all over the good memories we've had of them from their 90's heyday. Oh sweet jesus it's bad.
In 2001 Jay and Silent Bob traveled to Hollywood to stop a movie being made about them. They, being idiots, of course failed miserably. In 2019 the rights to the movie are sold for pennies and the lads lose the right to use their own names when a reboot is mooted. So once again they set off to Hollywood to stop this movie being made but on the way Jay bumps into a face from his past and meets someone who may change his future.
There's a scene late in the film where our leading men run into Holden McNeil (Ben Affleck), the star of Kevin Smith's 1997 classic Chasing Amy. He talks to them about trying to hold on to the past but then the need to let it go and move on. The irony of this scene can't have gone over Kevin Smith's head. Actually this desperate attempt to relive past glory is so bad that it will retroactively destroy your memories of the past so in a way it's worked. Fair play to Kevin Smith. He's made it work meta style. If only this was the case. It's a pathetic film, shoddy, desperately unfunny, held together by called in cameos and Smith's embarrassing, almost compulsive need to take potshots at himself and his work. Ripping the piss out of yourself is funny once, but 100 minutes of it isn't a good look man. Just go to therapy. It's cheaper.
The old faces are back, bloated, hauntingly skinny, decrepit from drug use, plastic from surgery. Faces that remind you how much better Smith's work was in the past. Faces that make you realise how far he's fallen. In striving for a blast of nostalgia he'll just make you upset instead. Nothing about this works. He takes the piss out of reboots but falls into the same traps the worst of them do, namely not understanding that some things just belong to a certain time, they worked because they captured the mood of an era. His audience has moved on, we've become more cynical, more demanding, less tolerant of nonsense. This new effort just doesn't measure up at all.
Jason Mewes hamming it up now grates instead of entertains. Smith's mute Bob is there to be slapped not laughed at. Smith's daughter Harley Quinn Smith as Millennium Faulken (get it!!) is so bad she could conceivably ruin cinema. It's weed and internet jokes will make you want to crawl up inside yourself out of shame. It takes shots at Hollywood's lack of imagination and America's racism and messes up both. It's nods to fans will embarrass the die hards and alienate newcomers. Even Jason Lee, always the best thing in the Smith universe can't help this. And Chris Hemsworth, in a holographic cameo looks as embarrassed as you surely will be for watching this phoned in muck.
Don't watch this. Don't even wait for it to come on netflix. Just pretend it never happened. Your inner teen will thank you.
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