Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *
Cast: Jason Mewes, Kevin Smith, Harley Quinn Smith, Aparna Brielle, Shannon Elizabeth, Brian O’Halloran, Jason Lee, Joey Lauren Adams, Jennifer Schwalbach Smith, Treshelle Edmond, Alice Wen, Craig Robinson, Justin Long, Chris Jericho, Val Kilmer, Ben Affleck, Matt Damon, Rosario Dawson, Adam Brody.
The cynical ploy of cinema and film is that unless there is a call for a sequel, the character, no matter how loved, seems to land in some sort of limbo, a celluloid purgatory, where the last scene in which they inhabit is where they remain, forever, locked and static, never to be smile, crack a joke, be hurt, cause harm or have the rest of the lives explained.
Whilst not every character who is ever captured on screen deserves such prosperous continuation, there are some that the viewer cannot but help identify with, that have gone beyond being mere personalities on screen and have somehow become part of a culture for the generation they represent. This could certainly be argued for Kevin Smith’s and Jason Mewes’ 90s personifications of Silent Bob and Jay, an exaggeration maybe on the whole Generation X stereotypes that constantly get passed around like a smoke a party, but ones that are, to the Generation X’ers themselves, hard hitting and so close to appreciation that it becomes almost a badge of honour to see yourselves in the complexity of the story being told.
A generation that never fitted in from the start, the first of the latch key kids, self-reliance, seen as slackers by their elders, cynical, pessimistic, and yet ones that were the first to adapt to a new belief, rejecting the damage sought by the polarisation of war, of greed, and ones that brought into the idealism of groups such as Nirvana, and which even in 2019’s Jay and Silent Bob Reboot found a way to exemplify the meaning of the generation’s angst and contempt, by making the entire film one that was genuinely self-aware.
Whilst the series of films made, whether it is Clerks, Chasing Amy or Mallrats have arguably not appealed to anyone specifically outside of the Generation X range, Jay and Silent Bob Reboot seeks to address that by encompassing of what could be described as an alliance of fortune with the forces that govern Generation Z, both alienated and treated with contempt with those around them, and one that strangely as a bond in the film works, especially with Kevin Smith’s daughter, Harley, given such prominence within the film.
It is with enormous pleasure, and the understanding of knowing, that Jay and Silent Bob Reboot works so well; a film that many will dismiss as being, in their minds, puerile, demeaning, over opiniated, even rude, but which, actually bookends the whole New Jersey set films with unnerving brilliance.
A sceptics dream, no need to ever remain silent when your eye catches the good deed intended, and despite the naysayers and detractors, Jay and Silent Bob Reboot is a film that has good intention driven right through it.
Ian D. Hall