DVD Stoners Jay and Silent Bob head to Hollywood in order to stop a film based on their comic book alter-egos being made - and naturally cause complete chaos along the way.
Details
Jay and Silent Bob are a pair of stoners who spend most of their waking hours hanging around outside the Quick Stop convenience store selling their own brand of "special" smokes and generally annoying anybody unfortunate enough to come within earshot.
However, Jay and Bob aren't total pot-head losers. Thanks to comic-book artists Holden McNeil and Banky Edwards, the pair provided the inspiration for superheroes Bluntman and Chronic, and their alter-egos have subsequently developed something of a following.
Unfortunately, after being chased away from their usual spot by an increasingly irritated Randal, Jay and Bob discover that Miramax are planning to make a Hollywood movie based on Bluntman and Chronic. Even worse, they apparently aren't going to see a penny from it.
Accessing the Internet for the first time, the pair discover something even more disturbing. Not only is the film being made without them, but Internet movie fans have been making some decidedly unpleasant comments about Bluntman and Chronic - and, by association, Jay and Silent Bob themselves.
After visiting Holden McNeil and discovering that Banky Edwards owns the film rights, Jay and Bob decide there's only one thing to do: travel across America to Hollywood and prevent Miramax from making the movie.
Naturally, getting there isn't going to be quite as straightforward as getting on a bus.
Along the way they encounter a hitch-hiker with some rather unconventional advice on obtaining lifts, a nun who clearly isn't reading from the same book Jay has in mind and a group of teenagers who bear more than a passing resemblance to the Scooby-Doo gang.
They also meet Justice, Sissy, Missy and Chrissy, four leather-clad women who claim to be animal-rights activists. Jay immediately falls for Justice and the pair are persuaded to help the women rescue an orangutan named Suzanne from an animal-testing laboratory.
Unfortunately, the animal-rights operation isn't quite what it appears to be. Jay and Bob have actually been used as unwitting accomplices in a diamond robbery, leaving them in possession of the orangutan whilst Federal Wildlife Marshal Willenholly begins pursuing them across the country.
Things aren't helped when Jay inadvertently invents the Coalition for the Liberation of Itinerant Tree-Dwellers. Unfortunately for him, the resulting acronym attracts considerably more attention than the organisation itself.
With Willenholly convinced he's pursuing dangerous animal liberators, Jay and Bob continue towards Hollywood with Suzanne in tow, determined to stop the Bluntman and Chronic movie and confront the Internet critics who have been slagging them off.
Once they finally reach the Miramax studios, however, things become even more ridiculous as they wander through various film sets, encounter a collection of suspiciously familiar Hollywood faces and eventually discover exactly what sort of movie is being made from their beloved comic-book characters.
Picture & Sound
The picture is bright and colourful with plenty of detail and an above-average bitrate throughout. There are no obvious signs of artifacting, outlining, dust specks or other significant picture imperfections. For such a recently produced film I'd have been surprised, and rather annoyed, if it had been any other way.
Colours are particularly vibrant, which suits Kevin Smith's deliberately comic-book presentation. The brightly coloured costumes, Hollywood sets and generally exaggerated appearance of the film are reproduced extremely well, whilst flesh tones remain natural throughout.
Detail levels are also impressive and the image remains stable even during the more frantic sequences. Black levels are good and there's little evidence of compression problems during darker scenes.
With much of the film being dialogue based there's little need for masses of fancy surround effects. That's probably just as well, because with Jay around there's already enough noise coming from the centre channel.
When the soundtrack does need to stretch its legs, however, it does so rather nicely. The explosive scenes at the animal laboratory and the final fight sequences bring the surround channels to life, with effects spreading convincingly across the soundstage.
The numerous songs scattered throughout the film also benefit from the Dolby Digital 5.1 mix, providing a much fuller soundstage than the dialogue-heavy sections might initially suggest.
Most importantly, dialogue is clear and crisp in the centre channel and there's never any need to keep adjusting the volume. Given the frankly astonishing quantity of profanity being delivered by Jason Mewes, that's probably just as well. You'll be able to hear every single obscenity with perfect clarity.
Menu & Extras
Although the menu is static it isn't completely boring, thanks to the occasional strange audio quip from the various characters. More importantly, Kevin Smith is quite obviously a fan of DVD and this release is positively bursting at the seams with additional material.
There's so much of it that the extras get an entire second disc to themselves, and you're going to need a good couple of hours if you intend to work your way through everything.
The first disc includes a full-length commentary with Kevin Smith, Jason Mewes and producer Scott Mosier. Given the personalities involved, you shouldn't expect a dry technical discussion about lens choices and lighting arrangements. Like the film itself, the commentary frequently wanders off in whatever direction happens to amuse them at the time.
The second disc kicks off with a frankly ridiculous collection of deleted scenes. There's nearly ninety minutes of material here, with the scenes introduced by Jason Mewes, Kevin Smith and various other members of the cast.
Ninety minutes of deleted material from a film that's only around a hundred minutes long might suggest that Kevin Smith simply forgot to stop filming.
Some of the material was quite rightly removed and the film certainly doesn't need to be another hour and a half longer, but there's plenty here that fans will enjoy. The introductions also make the material considerably more entertaining than simply dumping unfinished footage onto the disc.
There's also a selection of behind-the-scenes material which goes some way towards demonstrating just how much of Jason Mewes' seemingly endless stream of profanity was ad-libbed. Quite how anybody managed to keep a straight face during some of his scenes is beyond me.
The Secret Stash provides another look behind Kevin Smith's little empire, whilst Comedy Central's Reel Comedy offers the more conventional promotional approach to the film.
There's also a featurette involving Morris Day and The Time, Internet trailers complete with an introduction, television spots, storyboards and still galleries. Two music videos from Afroman and Stroke 9 add still more material to an already packed disc.
Cast and crew filmographies and DVD-ROM material round off the package. Individually, not everything is essential, but there's such an enormous quantity of material that fans of Kevin Smith and the View Askewniverse are going to be extremely well served.
This is exactly the sort of DVD package I like to see. Rather than simply providing the movie, a trailer and a couple of pages of production notes, somebody has actually taken advantage of the format and produced something that gives you plenty to explore after the film has finished.
Overall
If you thought the record for copious amounts of swearing and liberal use of the "F" word in a film was held by South Park, then you may have to reconsider. I don't think I've heard so much swearing in a film in my life!
If you're easily offended by that sort of thing then you'd better avoid this film like the plague. Mind you, if that's the case, you probably wouldn't be going anywhere near a film called Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back in the first place.
This film is complete and utter madness from start to finish.
There's barely a plot to speak of. Jay and Bob need to travel from New Jersey to Hollywood and everything else essentially exists to give Kevin Smith an excuse to throw increasingly ridiculous characters, cameos and jokes at them along the way.
And that's absolutely fine by me.
Jason Mewes is quite extraordinary as Jay. He seemingly possesses no internal filter whatsoever and delivers an almost continuous stream of obscenities, sexual observations and general nonsense. In practically any other film the character would become unbearable after ten minutes, yet somehow Mewes makes him strangely likeable.
Kevin Smith has the considerably easier job of standing next to him and saying almost nothing. Silent Bob's increasingly exasperated facial expressions are usually enough, although when he finally does open his mouth you know it's probably because Jay has failed to understand something spectacularly obvious.
The pairing works because they're complete opposites. Jay never stops talking whilst Bob barely starts, yet despite Jay's endless abuse and stupidity there's never any doubt that the two are genuinely friends.
Anyone unfamiliar with Kevin Smith's previous films may wonder what the hell is going on. Characters and references from Clerks, Mallrats, Chasing Amy and Dogma appear all over the place, frequently without much explanation.
For existing fans, though, that's half the fun. Dante and Randal are back at the Quick Stop, Brodie turns up in the comic-book store, Holden explains the Bluntman and Chronic situation and Jason Lee even manages to appear as two completely different characters.
The Hollywood section then allows Smith to start taking the mickey out of practically everybody, including himself.
Ben Affleck deserves considerable credit for being willing to send himself up so thoroughly. Seeing him and Matt Damon making the completely unnecessary Good Will Hunting 2: Hunting Season, complete with shotguns and a considerably more action-orientated approach to mathematics, is wonderfully stupid.
The fact that Affleck can appear earlier in the film as Holden McNeil and later as himself tells you everything you need to know about how seriously you're supposed to take any of this.
Will Ferrell is equally amusing as Federal Wildlife Marshal Willenholly, a man whose determination to recover one orangutan rapidly turns what should be a fairly straightforward pursuit into something approaching a national emergency.
Then there are the cameos. Carrie Fisher appears as the unfortunate nun who gives Jay and Bob a lift, George Carlin provides some extremely dubious advice about hitch-hiking and Shannon Elizabeth, Eliza Dushku, Ali Larter and Jennifer Schwalbach Smith spend much of their screen time squeezed into leather outfits.
I have no complaints about any of this.
But the best is saved until Hollywood.
It's worth buying the film just for the final light-sabre duel with the one and only Mark Hamill. Sporting a bright orange wig and playing the villainous Cocknocker, Hamill riotously sends up both himself and the character he'll probably spend the rest of his life being associated with.
Having Jay suddenly realise exactly who he's fighting makes the whole thing even better.
And then, because apparently Kevin Smith hadn't squeezed enough celebrities into the film already, we get Morris Day and The Time performing at the premiere.
The humour is hardly sophisticated. There are jokes about drugs, sex, bodily functions, homosexuality, the Internet and just about anything else Kevin Smith thinks he can get away with. Some of it is extremely childish and several jokes are deliberately pushed well beyond the point of good taste.
But that's the film. If you're expecting subtle character comedy, you've bought the wrong DVD.
There's actually something rather clever underneath all the stupidity too. Kevin Smith spends a surprising amount of the film making fun of his own career, his fans, Hollywood and the people who sit behind computers slagging off films and filmmakers they've never met.
Given that Jay and Bob's entire journey begins because they discover people insulting them on the Internet, the eventual solution to the problem is wonderfully ridiculous. Rather than simply ignoring the comments, they decide to personally visit the people responsible.
I'm sure there are a few filmmakers who'd quite like to do the same thing.
It isn't going to convert anybody who dislikes Kevin Smith. In fact, this is probably the worst possible introduction to his films because so many of the jokes assume you already know the characters and understand the references.
But if you've followed Jay and Silent Bob through the previous films, this feels like one enormous, foul-mouthed victory lap.
The DVD is excellent too. Picture and sound are both impressive and the enormous collection of supplementary material demonstrates just how much can be squeezed onto a two-disc release when somebody actually makes the effort.
Nearly ninety minutes of deleted scenes alone is bordering on insanity, although given the film we've just watched that somehow seems entirely appropriate.
It's crude, stupid, offensive and completely over the top.
And I laughed my arse off.
Snoogans.
Special features
Disc One
- Feature Commentary with Kevin Smith, Jason Mewes and Scott Mosier
Disc Two
- Deleted Scenes with Introductions
- The Secret Stash - with Introductions
- Behind the Scenes Featurette
- Morris Day and The Time Featurette
- Comedy Central's Reel Comedy Featurette
- Internet Trailers with Introduction
- Still Galleries and Storyboards
- Afroman Music Video
- Stroke 9 Music Video
- Television Spots
- Cast and Crew Filmographies
- DVD-ROM Enhanced
