Originally intended to be the last film set in the Askewniverse, or to feature Jay and Silent Bob, Strike Back features many characters from the previous Askew films, some in dual roles and/or reprising roles from thepreviousfourentries. The film was a minor commercial success, grossing $33.8 million worldwide from a $22 million budget, and received mixed reviews from critics.
The pair visit Holden McNeil (Chasing Amy), co-creator and co-writer of Bluntman and Chronic, and demand him to give them their royalties from the film, but Holden explains he sold his half of the rights to co-creator and artist Banky Edwards. Seeing the film's negative reception online,[10] the pair set out for Hollywood to prevent the film from tainting their image, or at least to receive the royalties owed to them.
En route, they befriend an animal liberation group: Justice, Sissy, Missy, Chrissy, and Brent. The organization is a front; Brent is a patsy, who will free animals from a laboratory as a diversion while the girls rob a diamond depository. Jay throws Brent out of the van to get closer to Justice, to whom he is attracted to. Justice is fond of the pair, but reluctantly accepts them as new patsies.
While the girls steal the diamonds, Jay and Silent Bob free the animals, stealing an orangutan named Suzanne. They escape as the police arrive and the van explodes, believing the girls have perished.
Federal Wildlife Marshal Willenholly (whose name is taken from Land of the Lost characters[1]) arrives at the crime scene; oblivious to the diamond heist, he claims jurisdiction due to the escaped animals, all of which have been recovered but the orangutan.
The officers find footage of a video Sissy recorded of Jay claiming to be "the clit commander", with accompanying literature that "Clit" is an acronym for Coalition for the Liberation of Itinerant Tree-Dwellers. In an interview with Reg Hartner on TV, Willenholly declares the crime an act of terrorism and calls for backup to hunt "the two most dangerous men on the planet."
Hiding inside a diner, the pair dress Suzanne as a child and pretend to be a gay couple, with Suzanne as their kid. Willenholly, not wanting to face the political repercussions of "arresting a gay couple", lets them leave but quickly catches on and resumes pursuit. The pair jump into a sewer system, and Willenholly is tricked into jumping off a dam.
Suzanne is abducted by a Hollywood animal acting agency called "Critters of Hollywood". Jay laments that they will never see Suzanne again, only to have Silent Bob angrily, and loudly, explain that the sign on the car (also calling Jay a dumbfuck for not getting what Silent Bob's gesturing right after Suzanne was stolen was about) indicated that they will probably meet up with Suzanne in Hollywood. The duo then hitch a ride and arrive in Hollywood. When they get to the Miramax lot, they find themselves in the background of an E! News newscast with Steve Kmetko and Jules Asner about the online threat the duo sent against the studio earlier in the film. Watching the news, Justice heads off to Hollywood to fix things, taking the diamonds with her, with Willenholly close behind.
Chased by studio security guard Gordon through the Miramax lot and several movie sets, including Good Will Hunting 2: Hunting Season, and reclaiming Suzanne from the set of Scream 4, Jay and Silent Bob end up in the dressing room of Jason Biggs and James Van Der Beek, the actors playing Bluntman and Chronic respectively in the film. Suzanne beats up the actors, knocking them out, and Jay and Silent Bob assume the roles while Van Der Beek and Biggs are arrested after getting mistaken for the duo.
Meeting the film's racist director Chaka Luther King, who mistakes them for Biggs and Van Der Beek's stunt doubles, Jay and Silent Bob are then escorted onto the set and forced to fight Mark Hamill, playing the supervillain of the film Cocknocker (a combination of Hamill's roles as The Joker, The Trickster, and Luke Skywalker) in a Star Wars-esque battle. Willenholly, armed with a shotgun, arrives to capture the pair, but Justice protects them, admitting the CLIT organization was only a diversion.
The other thieves arrive and a climactic gun fight ensues. Jay and Silent Bob locate Banky and demand their royalty money. Banky at first refuses on account of the large sum of money that Miramax paid him for the film. Silent Bob then informs Banky that he violated their original likeness rights contract by not getting their permission for the film before selling the film rights of Bluntman and Chronic to Miramax, and therefore could face serious legal troubles if he doesn't meet their demands. Banky finally relents and agrees to give the duo half of what he makes from the movie. Justice then turns herself and her former team in to Willenholly in exchange for a shorter sentence and freeing Jay and Silent Bob.
While they wait for the Quick Stop restraining order to expire, Jay and Silent Bob spend their royalty money locating everyone who expressed negative opinions on the internet about the movie and their characters, including children and members of the clergy, and travel to assault them. The scene cuts to the El Rey theater where a bunch of people exit, including Dante, Randal, Banky, Steve-Dave Pulski, Walt "The Fanboy" Grover, Willam Black, Hooper LaMonte, and sisters Alyssa and Tricia Jones, having just watched the Bluntman and Chronic movie, to poor reception. Jay and Silent Bob, accompanied by Justice and Willenholly (now an FBI agent), go across the street to enjoy the after party, featuring a performance from Morris Day and The Time.
The film's plot was heavily inspired by Chasing Dogma, a comic book miniseries that Smith wrote in 1998 and 1999 to explore events that happened in the Askewniverse between Chasing Amy and Dogma.[11]
The film was originally titled View Askew 5 and the title was changed to Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back. Filming began on January 14, 2001, and ended on April 19, 2001. Filming took in place in New Jersey, and mostly in California.
On his podcast Jay & Silent Bob Get Old, Kevin Smith explained at length about how much of a "headache" the film was to make, mostly owing to Jason Mewes's drug and alcohol abuse turning him into a "ticking time bomb", which threatened to shut the project down at any moment. During pre-production, Mewes would have constant mood swings due to heroin withdrawal, to the point that Smith actually threw him out of his car on their way to the set one day. Mewes would compensate for his lack of drugs by drinking heavily after every day of shooting and nearly got into a fist fight with producer Scott Mosier when he had to come back one night for a re-shoot while drunk. When the shoot wrapped, Smith told Mewes point-blank to get sober or he would never speak to him again.
Release
Box office
Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back grossed $30.1 million in the United States and Canada, and $3.7 million in other territories, for a worldwide total of $33.8 million, against a production budget of $22 million.[2]
The film grossed $11 million in its opening weekend, finishing third at the box office behind two other comedy sequels, American Pie 2 ($12.5 million) and Rush Hour 2 ($11.6 million).[12]
Critical reception
On review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes the film has an approval rating of 52% based on 151 reviews, with an average rating of 5.60/10. The site's critical consensus reads, "Fans can expect a good laugh as the cast from Smith's previous films reunite for Jay and Silent Bob's last bow. The loose plotting and crude language may be too much for others though."[13] On Metacritic the film has a weighted average score of 51 out of 100, based on 31 critics, indicating "mixed or average reviews".[14] Audiences surveyed by CinemaScore gave the film an average grade of "B+" on an A+ to F scale.[15]
Roger Ebert gave the film 3 out of 4 stars, writing that "[w]hether you will like 'Jay and Silent Bob' depends on who you are ... Kevin Smith's movies are either made specifically for you, or specifically not made for you".[16] Adam Smith of Empire gave the film 3/5 stars, writing that "[w]hen it's good it's very, very good, but when it's bad it's offensive", and noting that "the gag hit/miss ratio is really only about 50/50".[17] Scott Tobias of The A.V. Club wrote that "[e]ven at a slim 95 minutes, Jay And Silent Bob lets initially funny scenes trail off into long-winded monologues and silly digressions", and Elvis Mitchell of The New York Times called the film "[may]be the greatest picture ever made for 14-year-old boys. Mr. Smith may have hit his target, but he aimed very low."[18][19] In August 2001, Mike Schulz of River Cities' Reader wrote that, "for sheer laughs, both mindless and incredibly smart, nothing since 1997's Waiting for Guffman has even compared."[20]
Home media
Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back was released on VHS and on a two-disc DVD in the Dimension Collector's Series on February 26, 2002, presented in its original 2.39:1 widescreen aspect ratio. Among the bonus features on the DVD is an audio commentary by Smith, Mosier, and Mewes, 42 deleted, extended, and alternate scenes, music videos for Stroke 9's Kick Some Ass and Afroman's Because I Got High, storyboards, a gag reel, a behind the scenes special, still galleries, cast and crew filmographies, and TV spots. [21][22] A Blu-ray version of the film was released on September 19, 2006 with all features carried over from the DVD.
Soundtrack
Music from the Dimension Motion Picture Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back
Music from the Dimension Motion Picture: Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back, the soundtrack to the film, was released on August 14, 2001, by Universal Records. Varèse Sarabande released the original score by James L. Venable. It alternates film dialogue with songs of various genres that appear in the film. It features the 2001 Afroman hit, "Because I Got High", whose music video featured the characters Jay and Silent Bob. 'Tube Of Wonderful' was previously used as the theme song from Smith's 1997 film Chasing Amy.
Interlude: Cue Music by Jason Lee (as Brodie Bruce) – 0:03
In August 2001, three weeks prior to release, the film came under fire from the Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (GLAAD), for an alleged "overwhelmingly homophobic tone",[24] which included an abundance of gay jokes and characters excessively using the term "gay" to mean something derogatory. The scenes deemed particularly offensive included Jay's vehement refusal of giving oral sex to a male driver when hitchhiking, and Jay chastising Silent Bob for being willing to perform fellatio on him to get the security guard to let them go. Following an advance screening of the film, former GLAAD media director Scott Seomin asked Smith to make a $10,000 donation to the Matthew Shepard Foundation, as well as to include a reference to GLAAD's cause in the ending credits.[25][26] Ebert responded to this controversy, writing: "GLAAD should give audiences credit for enough intelligence to know the difference between satire and bigotry."[16]
On the bonus DVD, Smith explains in the on-camera intros of the deleted scenes that several scenes had to be cut from the theatrical release, due to the film initially receiving an NC-17 rating from the MPAA. He also mentions in the audio commentary of the feature film that it took three submissions to the MPAA for the film to finally earn an R rating.
See also
Hit-Girl: The Golden Rage of Hollywood, Smith's comic book re-adaptation of the concept.
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