By Allison Hambrick
Director Kevin Smith’s movie-verse consisting of “Clerks,” “Mallrats,” “Chasing Amy,” “Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back,” “Dogma” and “Clerks II” just grew a little more with the release of “Jay and Silent Bob Reboot” presented by AMC’s Fathom Events last month. Initially released as a single feature on Oct. 15, the film was then paired with “Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back” as a double feature on Oct. 17. Though those are the only planned theater showings, Smith, who also stars in the film as both Silent Bob and a fictionalized version of himself, and his co-star Jason Mewes are hitting the road with “The Jay and Silent Bob Reboot Roadshow”, where the film will be screened and a Q&A taking place after.
Twenty-five years after their first appearance in “Clerks” and 13 years after their most recent film appearance in “Clerks II,” Smith and Mewes reprise their most famous roles in a reboot intended to make fun of reboots.
The film itself pokes fun at this concept, with Jason Lee reprising his comic-obsessed “Mallrats” character Brodie Bruce to explain the concept: “A reboot, boys, is when Hollywood wants to make a lot of money without the hassle of creating a new movie, so they take an old movie and change just enough to make you pay for the same s**t all over again.”
Featuring cameos from the casts of Smith’s previous films and celebrities including Melissa Benoist, Val Kilmer, Chris Hemsworth, Tommy Chong and Stan Lee (via archive footage), “Jay and Silent Bob Reboot” brings back Smith and Mewes as self-described “refugees from the ’90s” trying to stop a reboot of a film based on a comic book that was written about them by the main character of “Chasing Amy,” Holden McNeil (Ben Affleck).
For those unfamiliar with Smith’s work, that plotline is intentionally similar to that of “Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back,” which also features them trying to stop a movie adaptation of McNeil’s comic, “Bluntman and Chronic.” The key differences between the 2001 film and the 2019 film are that it is set against the backdrop of a comic con instead of a Hollywood backlot and that it features a subplot in which Jay discovers that he has a daughter, Millenium “Milly” Faulken played by Smith’s real-life daughter, Harley Quinn Smith.
Described by Justine Smith of National Post as “a trailblazer in making nerd culture mainstream,” Smith has situated himself as a fixture in the nerd community because of his well-expressed passion for all things superhero, having directed episodes of “The Flash” and “Supergirl,” the latter of which also guest-starred his daughter. His status as a geek icon lead to him receiving the Hot Topic Icon Award earlier this year, and he and Mewes were invited to add hand and foot prints to the courtyard outside of the TCL Chinese Theatre in Hollywood.
Despite those accolades, “Jay and Silent Bob Reboot” was not screened for critics. Chris Knight, also of National Post, attributed this decision to the less than stellar reception of Smith’s more recent films “Cop Out” and “Yoga Hosers,” citing a statement made by Smith after the release of the former: “From now on, any flick I’m ever involved with, I conduct critic screenings thusly: you wanna see it early to review it? Fine: pay like you would if you saw it next week.”
Smith’s stance did not stop critics from reviewing “Jay and Silent Bob Reboot.”
Simon Abrams of RogerEbert.com gave the film one-and-a-half stars: “Acting as this site’s designated Kevin Smith apologist, it is my duty to report that “Jay and Silent Bob Reboot” — a road movie about the title characters, a couple of middle-aged potheads who travel cross-country to “Chronic-Con,” an equally over-produced celebration of Bluntman and Chronic, Jay and Silent Bob’s pot-themed superhero alter-egos — is the most uninspired and unfocused load of fan service that Smith has yet unleashed on his remaining hardcore audience.”
“It’s a ’90s nostalgia movie that relentlessly tweaks ’90s nostalgia,” said Owen Gleiberman of Variety, expressing the idea that the film works only for those who were already familiar with the characters and that the film is softer than Smith’s previous works. “Smith has every right to be older and wiser here, and “Jay and Silent Bob,” with its gentle anarchy and not-quite-mock nostalgia, is a time-machine sequel that passes amiably enough.”
Anyone interested in seeing “Jay and Silent Bob Reboot” in Atlanta next week can buy tickets to the roadshow here.
