No one loves Kevin Smith more than Kevin Smith. He’s a fan of not just building this façade of an extended universe with his films, but the smug idea that he ultimately rejected Hollywood when all is said and done. After endless efforts to hit the mainstream vein, and re-invent himself as a horror director, Smith has come back to doing what he does best: Repeating himself, repeating the same old jokes, and giving his hardcore fans a ton of weed jokes, and near endless pop culture references about “Star Wars” and “Batman.”
When Jay and Silent Bob discover that Hollywood is rebooting their movie “Bluntman and Chronic” and have taken away their rights to use their actual names, the clueless duo embark on another cross-country mission to the annual Chronic Con to stop it and stop the reboot’s director, Kevin Smith. No seriously. Meanwhile, as they head toward Hollywood, Jay hooks up with an old lover who reveals that he has an eighteen year old daughter that he’s never met before named—sigh—Millennium Falcon. She also wants to go to Hollywood to screen “Bluntman and Chronic” tags along with Jay and Silent Bob while getting in to various mishaps.
It’s ironic that Smith makes a big deal out of mocking the way that Hollywood is just recycling everything at this point in time, since “Jay and Silent Bob Reboot” is basically a refurbished version of “Dumb and Dumber To.” We’re back years later with a comedic duo of losers, both of whom are nearing fifty and still dressing like its 1993 (hanging out in front of an empty store front, wrinkles and all). There’s some convoluted plot that lifts them out of their environment, one of the pair learns that he inexplicably fathered a child, and they travel cross country to fulfill some huge goal. “Jay and Silent Bob Reboot” seems to be hell bent on establishing a new generation of stoners, while also setting up the “Mallrats” sequel, ad nauseum. Smith doesn’t have a script so much as he has an endless series of sketches that are loosely connected to trot out the same fan service we’ve seen over and over.
He sticks to what he knows his fans will enjoy, and doesn’t feel keen on introducing anything new or out of the box. Everyone from “Clerks” and “Dogma” makes an appearance, and there’s an awkwardly heavy emphases on “Chasing Amy,” all for the sake of droning on and on about the miracles of fatherhood. It’s a scene that stops the movie in its tracks and ruins the momentum however small. Smith parades a ton of celebrity cameos, awkward walk ons, comic book references, and fourth wall breaking all for the purposes of concealing that the script is fairly slim and has nothing to say. At all. Although the movie is about Jay and Silent Bob, Smith mistakenly places the comedic and dramatic weight of the film on his daughter Harley Quinn’s shoulders, and she’s just not a good enough actress to carry the movie.
She is–at her best–barely serviceable, and is always easily outshined by brief pop ups from superior actors like Ben Affleck, Rosario Dawson, and Melissa Benoist. Even mocking the fact that Smith is pushing his untalented daughter on us doesn’t side step the fact that, yes, Smith is forcing his untalented daughter on us. I’d be shocked if she ever breaks out as anything more than just Kevin Smith’s daughter who was shoehorned in to his latter movies. Even the goofiest stoner comedies had some kind of interesting commentary. All Smith can do is mock age old references to past incidents he’d endured in his personal live and ridicule professional failures like “Cop Out” all to please the very hardcore fan base that never seem to get enough of this worn out material. It’s depressingly unfunny, depressingly dull, and just depressing, period.