Fanboy Theater
Jay and Silent Bob feeds the addictions of Kevin Smith junkies
Smith fans squeal in recognition when they see Randal (Jeff Anderson) and Dante (Brian O'Halloran) from Clerks or Holden (Ben Affleck, who also shows up as himself in a turgid Good Will Hunting parody) and Alyssa (Joey Lauren Adams) from Chasing Amy, but these people are just blank signposts signifying nothing. Smith has so fallen in love with his characters that he can no longer see how uninteresting they've become. No one ever evolves; they just appear, slide by on familiarity, then disappear like cool gusts on a hot and humid day. When Holden explains to Jay and Silent Bob that Miramax is making a film based on them, he's really just there to make jokes about the movie business. "After they made She's All That, everything went to hell," Holden tells the duo about the studio, and it's such a nothing joke it might as well be in another language. Just who was this movie made for? Fans of other bad movies or people who read Daily Variety?
The strange thing is, as much as the film's a valentine to Smith's fans, it's also something of a fuck-you; it's a criticism of obsessions as much as it's a paean to mania. "Who'd pay to see that?" Holden says of the Bluntman and Chronic movie -- then he, Jay and Silent Bob stare into the camera, not so much sharing a moment of humor with the audience as sneering at the audience. It's a joke that runs throughout the movie: Every time someone comments on how awful an idea it is to make a film entirely about the two sidekicks (Jay and Silent Bob began in Clerks as little more than annoyances smoking weed on the sidelines), they stare at the camera, as though acknowledging that they're in a bad movie absolves them of being in a bad movie. And who wants to pay to see a movie so bad the actors and writer-director feel the need to keep reminding us of how bad it is?
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