Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back

Kevin Smith's first four films each depict some amount of real personal anguish, with these trials occasionally spelled by irresistible gusts of tasteless humor. This humor is often supplied by Jay and Silent Bob, a pair of do-nothing stoners brought to life by Jason Mewes and director Smith, respectively. Jay's hilarious, inventively profane rants about music, women, ganja and his non-homosexuality deliver just enough crudity to give viewers a break from the spectacular self-pity which Smith's main characters are often mired in. (Silent Bob, of course, says very little, but what he says is powerful wise.)

Our pothead pair finally assumes the starring position for Smith's newest, "Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back." There is no earnest main plot to distract us from Jay's motormouth stream-of-unconsciousness here; it's just a big ball of silliness that only gets sillier as the film progresses. You might think the whole thing would dissolve into a morass of repugnance, and in lesser hands it would. But a blistering pace, an extravagant abundance of gags, and Smith's inimitable gift for crafting tangy dialogue means that Jay and Silent Bob strike back, joyfully, right in the funny bone.

Admittedly, even the characters in the film can't believe that there could possibly be a whole film about Jay and Silent Bob. Our heroes have learned not only that a comic book based on them, "Bluntman and Chronic" (introduced in "Chasing Amy"), is being made into a film, but also that little pasty-faced nerds are talking smack about them while discussing said film on the Internet. To silence the cyberjackals, they set out for Hollywood to stop Miramax from making the film.

Their journey through Middle America begins with a horrible oral-sex gag and includes a riotous "Charlie's Angels" parody, the reliable fatuity of Will Farrell, and a chance encounter with Justice (Shannon Elizabeth), a woman so alluring that Jay finds himself attempting to stop calling her "bitch." They eventually arrive in an even more ludicrous Hollywood, featuring starry cameos aplenty and parodic potshots galore. Often, it seemed that Jay and Silent Bob were the best-adjusted characters in Smith's films because they were secure in their simple desires; here, they seem like the best-adjusted characters because everyone else is crazier than they are.

"Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back" will be the last film to feature the recurring characters from Smith's first four films, and it is resplendent with references to his previous oeuvre. In fact, the film almost feels like a free rendering of Smith's own journey to Hollywood. It begins with a creation myth for Jay and Silent Bob outside the convenience store depicted in "Clerks," a black-and-white film made for $30,000 during the nights when the store, at which Smith worked days, was closed. (It's almost worth the ticket price just to see the dudes from "Clerks" in color.) Just as everyone in the film (including Silent Bob, in a hilarious scene) is convinced that a Jay and Silent Bob movie will never fly, so were many skeptical about the prospects of a cheap film featuring two profane, lovelorn clerks and two equally profane potheads. It's hard not to see this film as a comment on the process of going commercial, especially with the director himself taking it all in.

All that don't matter if the film ain't funny. Thankfully, "Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back" is extremely funny. For one thing, it has Jay and Silent Bob, and Mewes (the loquacious one) proves himself eminently capable of carrying a whole film. His hoarse, eager, almost inappropriately fluent delivery brings off many lines which might otherwise have fallen flat; at times his readings brings to mind the shadowboxing of an exceptionally skilled pugilist, darting and ducking and rushing and pausing and occasionally (especially with Justice) coming, affectingly, straight at his goal.

For another thing, there are so many damn jokes in this film that you simply can't avoid laughing at some of them. Highbrows can appreciate an occasional gag, like the "Good Will Hunting" parody featuring the original actors and Gus Van Sant counting a huge stack of Benjamins. Lowbrows, however, will have a much better time of it, as when the "Charlie's Angels" parody girls use a tape of Jay boasting of his sexual prowess and the fact that he has stolen a chimpanzee to link him to the "Coalition for the Liberation of Intelligent Tree-Dwellers." This inspires some truly groan-worthy puns.

But fittingly, this film is dominated by Smith's gift for writing dialogue. This gift has made even his less successful films thoroughly enjoyable, even the ones without much actual acting or characterization. Smith's writing sizzles with the acid of satire, coins inventive, addictive slang and plays free and loose with every situation it addresses. Never has tasteless humor been so inventive, and thus so easy to laugh at. For raw, unfiltered hilarity, "Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back" is the funniest film to hit the silver screen this year.

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