Crazy situations still ensue (thanks to Fred Armisen’s square of an Uber-like driver, a Ku Klux Klan meeting, and the perils of edibles), but everything leads back to Milly’s safety, rebelliousness, and sorrow. This struggle is Jay and Silent Bob Reboot‘s core and it never disappears since the camera rarely if ever leaves Jay and Bob’s side for the duration. Once they decide to travel to Chronic Con together-Jay and Bob to ruin the last scene of Bluntman and Chronic reboot Bluntman v Chronic while Milly and friends (Treshelle Edmond’s Soapy, Aparna Brielle’s Jihad, and Alice Wen’s Shan Yu) hope to make Shan Yu an extra in it before returning to China-that promise becomes harder to keep. She makes him promise not to tell her before leaving and he does his best to comply. This stems from a reunion with Justice and the bombshell revelation that Jay fathered her now eighteen-year old daughter Milly (Harley Quinn Smith). Only after the duo gets their sexcapade fantasies out of the way at a Mooby’s can the juvenile humor start fading into the background and familial drama take control. It has marginal purpose later with Jay using Ted Underhill as a nom de plume, but it’s painful to watch. Rather than set the plot up with these familiar shenanigans alone, though, Smith decides to add an overlong courtroom scene that does more to frustrate in its over-the-top embellishment (Justin Long is doing a bad Harvey Fierstein voice and Joe Manganiello appears to have been given one director’s note: hammy) than importance via a convoluted con game stealing Jay and Bob’s names. That means a Buffalo Bill tuck, a Brodie Bruce (Jason Lee) dance, and the Quick Stop. There’s definitely nonsense to conquer before really delving into that possibility, however, since Smith must remind everyone who these guys are after the better part of two decades have passed. This time Jay receives a true emotional arc so nobody steals his thunder. Forcing Jay to put love over sex with Shannon Elizabeth’s Justice simply gave her criminal pals a path to hijack Strike Back. Some remains (especially the latter considering the premise hinges on Jay and Bob being “hetero life-mates”), but it’s joined by self-reflection and timely progression (prepare for a satisfying Chasing Amy send-off). Because he’d have been successful putting two forty-something stoners on-screen spewing that same hate masked as cartoonish farce (Smith’s recent low budgets and roadshow tours almost guarantee profit), it does matter that he didn’t. I was skeptical when Jay and Silent Bob Reboot was announced because a majority of diehard fans probably did want more of the same: misogyny and gay jokes. These characters now needed to add substance to their own story. So while Jay (Jason Mewes) and Silent Bob’s (Smith) first journey to Hollywood wielded them as immature idiots with so little character development that an entire shoehorned subplot about cat burglars was added for hollow drama alongside the lowbrow antics, a more mature Smith couldn’t just go back to that well. Then he moved away from the View Askewniverse (with varying success), started a podcasting career (spawning his weirdest movie to-date, Tusk), and suffered a heart attack that sparked weight loss and the overdue mending of burnt bridges.
While his daughter was born two years prior to Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back, fatherhood had only begun.
0 kommentar(er)
