James Butlin | On 17, Feb 2014

Director: Kevin Smith
Cast: Jason Mewes, Kevin Smith
Certificate: 15
Watch Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back online: TalkTalk TV / iTunes

Kevin Smith is a bit of a Marmite type of director/personality. He’s not the most brilliant director, but he has garnered a strong cult following off the back of his fantastic debut feature film, Clerks, and subsequent semi-sequels and spin-offs featuring his weed-dealing duo Jay and Silent Bob. This is the only film that had them in top-billing, carrying the film. It’s probably for the best too.

Jason Mewes plays Jay, the fast-talking know-nothing and Smith plays the, well, Silent Bob. As the two of them find out about a comic featuring their likenesses being turned into a film, they first want money from it, but when they discover the internet (before the internet was a heavily-used medium) and all of the insults towards them, they look to shut the film down.

A film featuring a comic-book duo by the names of Bluntman and Chronic, the tone of the film is fairly obvious to work out. It’s a standard stoner adventure set-up, meeting some famous faces of Hollywood past like Shannon Elizabeth and Seann William Scott as well as some neat nerd icons and some of Smith’s usual suspects.

There are a few laughs on offer, but mostly it’s just in-jokes and meta-references that make it feel like little more than an exercise in filmic self-love. If the likes of Harold & Kumar or Cheech & Chong are your bag, this might be something you could go for.

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