Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back

Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back
Theatrical release poster
Directed by	Kevin Smith
Written by	Kevin Smith
Produced by	Scott Mosier
Starring	Jason Mewes Kevin Smith Ben Affleck Eliza Dushku Shannon Elizabeth Will Ferrell Ali Larter Jason Lee Chris Rock
Cinematography	Jamie Anderson
Edited by	Scott Mosier Kevin Smith
Music by	James L. Venable
Production companies	Dimension Films Miramax Films View Askew Productions
Distributed by	Miramax Films
Release date	August 24, 2001 (2001-08-24)
Running time	104 minutes[1]
Country	United States
Language	English
Budget	$22 million[2]
Box office	$33.8 million[2]

Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back is a 2001 American satirical stoner buddy comedy film written, co-edited, and directed by Kevin Smith and produced and co-edited by Scott Mosier. The film is the fifth set in the View Askewniverse, a growing collection of characters and settings that developed out of Smith's cult-favorite Clerks. It stars Jason Mewes and Smith respectively as the two eponymous characters. The film also stars Shannon Elizabeth, Jason Lee, Ben Affleck, Matt Damon, Will Ferrell, Eliza Dushku, Ali Larter, and Chris Rock, among many others, most of which in cameo appearances. The title and logo for Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back are direct references to The Empire Strikes Back.

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 the previous four entries. The film received mixed reviews from critics.

Smith announced in February 2017 that he was writing a sequel called Jay and Silent Bob Reboot and started filming in February 2019^[3][4][5][6] and was released on October 15 that same year.^[7][8] From February to June 2019, Smith additionally re-adapted the plot of the film to the character of Mindy McCready / Hit-Girl in the relaunched Image comic book series, titled Hit-Girl: The Golden Rage of Hollywood, with Dave Lizewski filling the role of Banky Edwards.^[9]

Dante Hicks and Randal Graves put a restraining order on Jay and Silent Bob, finally fed up with their drug dealing antics outside the strip mall they work at after the duo tell a pair of teenagers that they were married in a Star Wars themed wedding. Not allowed within 100 feet of the strip mall for at least a year, Jay and Silent Bob visit Brodie Bruce at his comic shop where they learn that Miramax Films is adapting Bluntman and Chronic, the comic book based on their likenesses.

The pair visit Holden McNeil, co-creator and co-writer of Bluntman and Chronic, and demand that he give them their royalty money 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 ruining 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 their 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 Suzanne. The police find footage of a video Sissy made of Jay claiming to be "the clit commander", with "Clit" edited to be an acronym for Coalition for the Liberation of Itinerant Tree-Dwellers. Willenholly declares the crime an act of terrorism and calls for backup to hunt "the two most dangerous men on the planet." He finds Jay and Silent Bob at a diner near Vasquez Rocks, and chases them into the sewer system of a nearby dam. Suzanne helps the duo in losing Willenholly by luring him off the dam, but is subsequently abducted by a Hollywood animal acting agency.

The duo then hitch a ride and arrive in Hollywood, and eventually, the Miramax lot. Chased by a team of security guards through the 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 anti-white 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 that he shut down production of the movie. Banky refuses on account of both the large sum of money Miramax offered him for the film and that the internet will continue to troll them regardless. Silent Bob then informs Banky that he violated their original likeness rights contract by selling the film rights of Bluntman and Chronic to Miramax without their permission, and therefore could face legal trouble if he doesn't give them their legally entitled royalties. Banky finally relents and agrees to give the duo half of his payment for the film.

Justice then turns herself and her former team in to Willenholly in exchange for a shorter sentence and dropping the charges on Jay and Silent Bob. The duo spend their royalty money locating everyone who mocked them, their characters, and the movie on the internet, 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.

After the credits, God (Dogma) closes the View Askewniverse book.^[2]

Additionally, Wes Craven, Jules Asner, Steve Kmetko, Gus Van Sant, Jason Biggs, James Van Der Beek, Shannen Doherty, and Morris Day all appear as themselves.

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 filming wrapped, Smith told Mewes point-blank to get sober or he would never speak to him again.

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]

On review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes, Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back 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 three out of four 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]

Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back was released on VHS and on a two-disc DVD set on February 26, 2002, by Dimension Home Video as a part of their "Dimension Collector's Series", 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. As for 2020, the film's home media distribution has been handled by Paramount Pictures Home Entertainment following Paramount Global's purchase of 49% of Miramax (which includes Dimension Films' pre-2006 film and television catalog).

Professional ratings

Review scores
Source	Rating
AllMusic	[23]

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.

Other songs that featured in the film but weren't included on the soundtrack album include "Life's Been Good" by Joe Walsh, "Too Much Heaven" by The Bee Gees, and Jason Mewes' cover of "Fuck tha Police" by Ice Cube.

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] Roger 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.

• Hit-Girl: The Golden Rage of Hollywood, Smith's comic book re-adaptation of the concept.
• Oh, What a Lovely Tea Party, a documentary about the making of the film.
• Jay & Silent Bob Reboot, Smith's "requel" to the film.
• List of films featuring fictional films

^ According to Ethan Alter of Film Journal International, Smith did not intend to make another View Askewniverse film upon completion of Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back, but only decided to do so several years later, following the unsuccessful release of Jersey Girl.^[27]

^ Will Ferrell would later star in the 2009 film adaptation of Land of the Lost as Dr. Rick Marshall alongside Danny McBride as Will Stanton and Anna Friel as Holly Cantrell.

Wikiquote has quotations related to Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back.

• Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back at IMDb
• Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back at Box Office Mojo
• Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back at Metacritic
• Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back Filming Locations at Movie Locations Guide
• Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back movie stills at Virtual History Film