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Jay and silentbob strike back1/1/2024 ![]() And when Smith trots out his many Zucker brothers-style movie lampoons (“Charlie’s Angels,” “Planet of the Apes” and “The X-Files” are among the many targets), you’re not sure if his intentions are genuine, or if he’s actually referencing the fatigue of such gags, even in his own film.The mishmash irrevocably worsens once Jay and Bob are turned loose inside “Miramax Studios” (actually the CBS Radford lot in North Hollywood, where the movie-within-the-movie from “Scream 3” was also set), and their odyssey transforms into a phantasmagorical orgy of masturbatory Miramax in-jokes and contract-player cameos. That early-on Ain’t It Cool News sendup really informs of pic’s tone, pitched somewhere, uncomfortably, between parody and self-parody. The result is the first Smith movie that wears its subversiveness on its sleeve - it’s as though Smith has suddenly lost all faith in the intelligence of his audience. But this time out, Smith has targeted something - movie franchises and the studios that produce them - that is already highly self-parodical. Since “Clerks,” Smith’s films have been fitted with raw, taboo-bursting dialogue and a sneakily subversive wit that deconstructed a number of Hollywood genres. With this set-up in place, pic turns from narrative to slapdash sketch comedy and broad parodies of big Hollywood movies: Jay and Silent Bob receive instruction in “The Book of the Road” from fellow hitcher George Carlin, before ill-advisedly trying out their newfound expertise on nun Carrie Fisher (one of a string of “Star Wars” references) they get picked up in the Mystery Machine by the characters from “Scooby Doo” (a parody of a movie that hasn’t even come out yet) and they find themselves the unwitting pawns of a quartet of jewel thief femmes fatales ( Shannon Elizabeth, Eliza Dushku, Ali Larter and Jennifer Schwalbach). ![]() Back in the present, the duo is informed by their pal Brodie ( Jason Lee, reprising his “Mallrats” character) that their comic book alter egos, Bluntman and Chronic, are about to be the subject of a big-budget Hollywood action movie.Īfter verifying this with “Bluntman” co-creator Holden (Ben Affleck, in his “Chasing Amy” role) and reading some hurtful gossip on a movie Web site (called Movie Poop Shoot, but designed to look exactly like Ain’t It Cool News), they set off on a cross-country hitchhike to California, where they plan to sabotage the production or, at least, get in on the action. Pic opens on a clever bit in which we see our titular heroes as infants, parked in their carriages outside of a New Jersey convenience store, which is subsequently revealed to be the Quik Mart location from “Clerks,” where the characters were first introduced almost a decade ago. ![]() Like the other films in Smith’s unofficial series of “New Jersey Chronicles,” “Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back” is set in a continuous universe, with the characters and settings from “Clerks,” “Mallrats,” “Chasing Amy” and “Dogma” roaming in and out of the action to a greater extent than Smith has allowed before.
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