Jay and Silent Bob Reboot

Jay and Silent Bob Reboot videos

Cast & Crew

Jason Mewes

Jay

Kevin Smith

Silent Bob

Harley Quinn Smith

Milly

Jason Lee

Brodie Bruce

Aparna Brielle

Jihad

Alice Wen

Shan Yu

Ben Affleck

Holden McNeil

Matt Damon

Loki

Shannon Elizabeth

Justice

Fred Armisen

Uber Driver

Molly Shannon

Joline

Rosario Dawson

Reggie Faulken

Brian O'Halloran

Dante Hicks

Joey Lauren Adams

Alyssa Jones

Justin Long

Lawyer

Jennifer Schwalbach Smith

Miss McKenzie Mooby's Manager

Jason Biggs

Self

James Van Der Beek

Self

Val Kilmer

Bluntman

Tommy Chong

Alfred

Kevin Smith

Director

Kevin Smith

Screenwriter

Trevor O'Neil

Executive Producer

Potsy Ponciroli

Executive Producer

Jonathan Saba

Executive Producer

R. Bryan Wright

Executive Producer

Jason Mewes

Executive Producer

Liz Destro

Producer

Jordan Monsanto

Producer

Yaron Levy

Cinematographer

Nate Jones

Production Design

Hunter Brown

Art Director

Jonathan Cappel

Set Decoration

Melissa Walker

Costume Design

Meagan Lewis

Casting

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News & Interviews for Jay and Silent Bob Reboot

An Oral History of Jay and Silent Bob with Jason Mewes and Kevin Smith

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Critic Reviews for Jay and Silent Bob Reboot

Audience Reviews for Jay and Silent Bob Reboot

• Oct 18, 2020

  A film for Kevin Smith fans in the truest sense, this is not just a Jay and Silent Bob film, this is an everything Kevin Smith film referencing his whole View Askewniverse with epilogues to past films, along with nods to his podcasts, his other shows like Comic Book Men, his tenure on the CW, hell even his own personal life and turn to veganism. The film should practically come with a Kevin Smith guidebook. If you have been following Smith's career and do listen to his podcasts and watch his other works, you'll get the jokes and love the nods. I do, and I loved it. But I very much acknowledge it is a film for the fans to a fault. But Smith has been open about this, he made this for his fans, and no one else. This isn't for Smith newcomers, and honestly I can't fault him for that. And honestly…I really liked this movie! It's one of Smith's best. Self-indulgent to the extreme, it's also strangely heartwarming and touching at times with Smith reflecting on his time as a filmmaker and parent through his characters. He even takes time to correct the mistakes of his past. As much as I love them, some of his past works are a little problematic in today's climate. I'm not out their shouting "cancel!", but it does make watching them now awkward. Even Smith is aware of this, having his problematic characters like Jay be forced to deal with their behavior in a modern climate. It's a unique almost meta way to address the faults of your past as an artist, and it actually really works. But is the movie funny? In my opinion, yes, it's one of Smith's funniest. I'm saying that as a Smith fan who got a lot of the jokes, but I had a ton of fun with it. It's the reboot I didn't know I needed.

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  michael m Super Reviewer
• Jan 20, 2020

  Jay and Silent Bob have been some of the funniest side characters from all of Kevin Smith's films. The issue is similar to other films of this nature, the lead characters don't have enough story to warrant out a padded out film. I honestly thought Smith might adopt a film similar to the Harold and Kumar franchise, and embrace the craziness that entails. The best parts of the film are the connections to other great Smith films. Matt Damon's cameo is hilarious, but bizarrely placed. Ben Affleck returning to provide a mini sequel to Chasing Amy adds incredible weight. I was actually more interested in that moment than most parts of the film. Smith clearly has the ability to write character beats, but is more eager to please the juvenile audience members instead. The previous film wasn't a classic and this is no classic either. I liked the film, but the cameos are hit and miss. There's a better film here, but not what Smith delivered. 12/01/2020

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  brendan n Super Reviewer
• Oct 30, 2019

  Jay and Silent Bob Reboot is strictly made for writer/director Kevin Smith's fanbase, so does trying to play outside this cultivated audience even matter? Honestly, there's no way this is going to be anyone's first Smith movie, so it's already running on an assumed sense of familiarity with the characters and stories of old, which is often a perquisite to enjoying many of the jokes (more on this later). It's been 25 years since Clerks originally debuted and showcased Smith's ribald and shrewd sense of dialogue-driven, pop-culture-drenched humor. He's created his own little sphere with a fervent fanbase, so does he need to strive for a larger audience with any forthcoming movies or does he simply exclusively serve the existing crowd? Jay (Jason Mewes) and his hetero life mate Silent Bob (Smith) are out for vengeance once again. Hollywood is rebooting the old Bluntman and Chronic superhero movie from 2001, this time in a dark and edgy direction, and since Jay and Silent Bob are the inspirations for those characters, even their likenesses and names now belong to the studio. The stoner duo, older and not so much wiser, chart a cross-country trip to California to attend ChronicCon and thwart the filming of the new movie, directed by none other than Kevin Smith (himself). Along the way, Jay and Bob discover that Jay's old flame Justice (Shannon Elizabeth) has had a daughter, Millenium "Milly" Falcon (Harley Quinn Smith) and Jay is the father. Milly forces Jay and Bob to escort her and her group of friends to ChronicCon and Jay struggles with holding back his real connection. One of my major complaints with 2016's Yoga Hosiers (still the worst film of his career) was that it felt like it was made for his daughter, her friends, and there was no point of access for anyone else. It felt like a higher-budget home movie that just happened to get a theatrical release. Jay and Silent Bob Reboot feels somewhat similar, reaching back to the 2001 comedy that itself was reaching back on a half-decade of inter-connected Smithian characters. There is a certain degree of frantic self-cannibalism here but if the fans are happy then does Smith need to branch out? This is a question that every fan will have to answer personally. At this point, do they want new stories in the same style of the old or do they just want new moments with the aging characters of old to provide an ever-extending coda to their fictional lives? I certainly enjoyed myself but I could not escape the fact at how eager and stale much of the comedy came across. Smith has never been one to hinge on set pieces and more on character interactions, usually profane conversations with the occasional slapstick element. This is one reason why the original Jay and Silent Bob Strikes Back suffers in comparison to his more character-driven comedies. Alas, the intended comedy set pieces in Reboot come across very flat. A lustful fantasy sequence never seems to take off into outrageousness. A drug trip sequence begins in a promising and specific angle and then stalls. The final act has a surprise villain that comes from nowhere, feels incredibly dated, and delivers few jokes beyond a badly over-the-top accent and its sheer bizarre randomness. There's a scene where the characters stumble across a KKK rally. The escape is too juvenile and arbitrary. A courtroom scene has promise when Justin Long appears as a litigation attorney for both sides, but the joke doesn't go further, capping out merely at the revelation of the idea. This is indicative of much of Reboot, where the jokes appear but are routinely easy to digest and surface-level, seldom deepening or expanding. There's a character played by Fred Armison who makes a second appearance, leading you to believe he will become a running gag that will get even more desperate and unhinged with each new appearance as he seeks vengeance. He's never seen again after that second time. There are other moments that feel like setups for larger comedic payoffs but they never arrive. The actual clip of the Bluntman and Chronic film, modeled after Zack Snyder's Batman v. Superman, is almost absent any jokes or satire. There are fourth-wall breaks that are too obvious to be funny, as they rest on recognition alone. There's a running joke where Silent Bob furiously taps away at a smart phone to then turn around and showcase a single emoji. It's cute the first time, but then this happens like six more times. Strangely it feels like Smith's sense of humor has been turned off for painfully long durations on this trip down memory lane. The structure is so heavily reminiscent of Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back that there are moments that repeat step-for-step joke patterns but without new context, meaning the joke is practically the repetition itself. The problem with comedy is that familiarity can breed boredom, and during the funny stretches, I found myself growing restless with Reboot as we transitioned from stop to stop among the familiar faces. I enjoyed seeing the different characters again but many of them had no reason to be involved except in a general "We're bringing the band back together" camaraderie. It's nice to see Jason Lee again but if he doesn't have any strong jokes, why use him in this way? Let me dig further with Lee to illustrate the problem at heart with Reboot. Jay and Silent Bob visit Brodie (Lee) at his comic book shop, which happens to be at the mall now. He complains that nobody comes to the mall any longer and he has to worry about the "mallrats," and then he clarifies, he's talking about actual rodents invading the space, and he throws a shoe off screen. I challenge anyone to find that joke amusing beyond a so-bad-it's-fun dad joke reclamation. I kept waiting for Smith to rip open some satirical jabs on pop culture since 2006's Clerks II. In the ensuing years, Star Wars and Marvel have taken over and geek culture and comic books rule the roost. Surely a man who made his bones on these topics would have something to say about this moment of over saturation, let alone Hollywood's narrow insistence on cash-grab remakes. I kept waiting for the Smith of old to have some biting remarks or trenchant commentary. Milly's diverse group of friends (including a Muslim woman named "Jihad") is referred to like it's a satirical swipe at reboots, but there isn't a joke there unless the joke is, "Ha ha, everyone has to be woke these days," which is clunky and doesn't feel like Smith's point of view. There are several moments where I felt like the humor was trying too hard or not hard enough. As a result, I chuckled with a sense of familiarity but the new material failed to gain much traction. I do want to single out one new addition that I found to be hysterical, and that is Chris Hemsworth as a hologram version of himself at a convention. The Thor actor has opened up an exciting career path in comedy as highlighted by 2017's Ragnarok, but just watching his natural self-effacing charm as he riffs about the dos and don'ts of acceptable behavior with his hologram is yet another reminder that this man is so skilled at hitting all the jokes given to him. Where the movie succeeds best is as an unexpected and heartfelt father/daughter vehicle, with Jay getting a long-delayed chance to mature. It's weird to say that a movie with Jay and Silent Bob in starring roles would succeed on its dramatic elements, but that's because it feels like this is the territory that Smith genuinely has the most interest in exploring. The concept of Jay circling fatherhood and its responsibilities is a momentous turn for a character that has previously been regarded as a cartoon. His growing relationship with Milly is the source of the movie's best scenes and the two actors have an enjoyable and combative chemistry, surely aided by the fact that Mewes has known Harley Quinn Smith her entire existence. This change agent leads to some unexpected bursts of paternal guidance from Jay, which presents an amusing contrast when the goofy stoner character is tasked with being a responsible parent. There's a clever through line of the difference between a reboot and a remake, and Smith takes this concept and brilliantly repackages it into a poignant metaphor about parenthood. Smith's position has a father has softened him up a bit but it's also informed his worldview and he's become very unabashedly sentimental, and when he puts in the right attention, it works. There's an end credit clip with the late Stan Lee where Smith is playing a potential Reboot scene with the man, and it's so sweet to watch the genuine affection both men have for one another. I'm raising the entire grade for this movie simply for a wonderful extended return of Ben Affleck's Holden McNeil character, the creator of Bluntman and Chronic. We get a new ending for 1997's Chasing Amy that touches upon all the major characters and allows them to be wise and compassionate. It's a well-written epilogue that allows the characters to open up on weightier topics beyond the standard "dick and fart" jokes that are expected from a Smith comedy. It's during this sequence where the movie is allowed to settle and say something, and it hits. The highly verbose filmmaker has been a favorite of mine since I discovered a VHS copy of Clerks in the late 90s. I will always have a special place for the man and see any of his movies, even if I'm discovering that maybe some of the appeal is starting to fade. I don't know if we're ever going to get a Kevin Smith movie that is intended for wide appeal. Up next is Clerks 3, which the released plot synopsis reveals is essentially the characters of Clerks making Clerks in the convenience store, which just sounds overpoweringly meta-textual. He's working within the confines of a narrow band and he seems content with that reality. I had the great fortune to attend the traveling road show for this film and saw Smith and Mewes in person where they introduced the film and answered several questions afterwards. Even though it was after midnight (on a school night!) I was happy I stayed because it was easy to once again get caught up in just how effortlessly Smith can be as a storyteller, as he spins his engaging personal yarns that you don't want to end. As a storyteller, I'll always be front and center for this gregarious and generous man. As a filmmaker, I'll always be thankful for his impact he had on my fledgling ideas of indie cinema and comedy, even if that means an inevitable parting of ways as he charts a well-trod familiar path. Jay and Silent Bob Reboot is made strictly for the fans, and if you count yourself among that throng, you'll likely find enough to justify a viewing, though it may also be one of diminished returns. Nate's Grade: C+

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  nathan z Super Reviewer
• Oct 16, 2019

  Haven't laughed that hard in a long time. Kudos to Kevin Smith, for not only hitting our funny bones so hard. But, tugging at our heart strings as well. Which was welcome and unexpected. Solid movie! So good!!!!! Also, Jason Mewes killed it so hard in this movie. Great job, sir!

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  Super Reviewer