Movie Review: Jay and Silent Bob Reboot

Jay and Silent Bob Reboot ** / *****

Directed by: Kevin Smith.

Written by: Kevin Smith.

Starring: Jason Mewes (Jay), Kevin Smith (Silent Bob / Kevin Smith), Harley Quinn Smith (Milly), Aparna Brielle (Jihad), Alice Wen (Shan Yu), Treshelle Edmond (Soapy), Chris Hemsworth (Chris Hemsworth), Val Kilmer (Reboot Bluntman), Matt Damon (Loki), Ben Affleck (Holden McNeil), Rosario Dawson (Reggie Faulken), Melissa Benoist (Reboot Chronic), Joe Manganiello (Bailiff), Shannon Elizabeth (Justice), Justin Long (Brandon St. Randy (Lawyer), Kate Micucci (Mooby's Employee), Jason Lee (Brodie Bruce), David Dastmalchian (Nervous Cop), Joey Lauren Adams (Alyssa Jones), Diedrich Bader (Con Security Guard), Craig Robinson (Judge Jerry N. Executioner), James Van Der Beek (James Van Der Beek), Jason Biggs (Jason Biggs), Frankie Shaw (Prosecutor), Fred Armisen (Uber driver), Molly Shannon (Joline), Keith Coogan (Keith Coogan), Tommy Chong (Alfred), Mickey Gooch Jr. (Holly Roller), Chris Jericho (Klan Leader), Brian O'Halloran (Dante Hicks), Jennifer Schwalbach Smith (Miss McKenzie Mooby's Manager), Method Man (Himself), Redman (Himself), Donnell Rawlings (Captain), Ralph Garman (Ted Underhill).

 

As we end another decade, I think back to 20 years ago, when I read an article about the crop of young filmmakers that emerged in the 1990s, and who is most likely to become the next Martin Scorsese – not necessarily in having the same vision as Scorsese, but in becoming that universally respected and admired filmmaker. The usual suspects you would expect to see were on the list – Paul Thomas Anderson, Wes Anderson, Quentin Tarantino, etc. – and another name was on it as well – Kevin Smith. 20 years later, that may sound absurd – but it didn’t at the time. Smith had become a DIY filmmaking hero with Clerks – which was not just a great DIY movie, but a great movie itself. He had gone to the studio after, with Mallrats, and had a bad experience – returned to a lower budget for Chasing Amy – still his best film, even if some of the critiques of it are valid, and then made his most ambitious film to date with Dogma. Smith seemed poised to become one of the major filmmakers of his generation. 20 years later, I think it’s fair to say that it didn’t happen that way – Smith returned to his comfort zone for Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back, tried to mature a little with Jersey Girl, then returned to his comfort zone with Clerks II, tried to do a kind of Judd Apatow film with Zack and Miri Make a Porno, tried out the director-for-hire thing with Cop Out, tried to reinvent himself as a horror movie filmmaker with Red State, and then kind of settled into a strange place of doing podcasts and speaking engagements, and occasionally making some strange horror/comedy hybrids like Tusk and Yoga Hosers – the latter of which is the one Smith film I have never see (and I’m not even sure I ever had a chance to see if I wanted – it’s currently not available on any streaming platform in Canada I have access to). And now, once again, Smith has returned to his comfort zone with Jay and Silent Bob Reboot – which essentially has the same plot as Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back, but with an even more star studded cast, and clearly a lot less money to spend. It is, undoubtedly, the least ambitious thing Smith could do as a filmmaker after all these years.

 

Jay and Silent Bob Reboot is, in short, a very lazy film in which Smith reunites yet again with Jason Mewes, and the two play their famous Jay and Silent Bob characters. They discover, once again, that Hollywood is going to make another Bluntman and Chronic movie, and once again, they hit the road to Hollywood to try and stop it. This time, though, when they reach Chicago, and Jay reunites with his long lost girlfriend Justice (Shannon Elizabeth), he discovers he has a daughter – now 18 – named Millie, and played by Smith’s real life daughter Harley Smith. So instead of the four cat suit wearing diamond thieves that travelled to California with them in the other movie, Jay now travels with his daughter, and her diverse friend group – although he doesn’t reveal who he really is to Millie.

 

As is the case with many Smith movies, the movie is a series of self-aware jokes, and cameos by famous actors, some playing characters they’ve played for Smith in the past, some playing all new characters. With this much talent on display in front of the camera, it’s hard to say that the movie has no charm or now laughs – it does – but it really does feel like Smith made this movie as an excuse to hang out with all his buddies again, and churn something out to make some money. Including a bunch of self-aware jokes about how lazy reboots are doesn’t make this one any less lazy – hell, Fuller House has jokes about how lazy reboots are, so Smith wins no points from me on that front.

 

Clearly Smith has made this movie for himself – and for his ever loyal fan base, who has allowed his to coast on his success from the 1990s, with continued support throughout the years. Die hards of Smith – the target audience – will likely feel that they got their money’s worth here – an excuse to sink back into their comfort zone in a movie that does challenge them in any way, and basically repeats what Smith has done before – and better. For someone like me – who really was a huge fan of Smith back in the 1990s (admittedly, as someone who was 13 when Clerks came out, I was in the perfect demographic for Smith’s humor) every new Smith film just serves to remind me that I really do think Smith could have become a great filmmaker. It was there in those early films – and once in a while, it’s there in the later films – I liked Clerks II more than most, thought that had he continued down the path started by Red State he could have become an excellent horror filmmaker, etc. As a fan of Smith’s, but not one of his diehards, it’s hard to be disappointed that this is where everything led to.

 

And yet, in a scene late in Jay and Silent Bob Reboot, Smith kind of answers why this happened as Jay and Silent Bob talked to Holden (Ben Affleck) from Chasing Amy – who basically what describes what being a father means to him, and he can assume, what it means to Smith. That the youthful ambition he felt has faded since becoming a father – and wanting what his best for his kid. And to be fair, Smith really does seem happy – he seems like he is enjoying his life, his marriage, his kid, his career and everything he does. So maybe we can acknowledge that it really does seem like Smith has won at life – because if being happy isn’t the meaning of life, then I don’t know what it. It wasn’t what was best for his career as a filmmaker clearly – but hey, if it works for him, go for it. Personally though, I never felt more checked out as a Kevin Smith fan.

Movie Review: Tusk

Tusk
Directed by: Kevin Smith.
Written by: Kevin Smith.
Starring: Michael Parks (Howard Howe), Justin Long (Wallace Bryton), Genesis Rodriguez (Ally Leon), Haley Joel Osment (Teddy Craft), Johnny Depp (Guy Lapointe), Harley Morenstein (Border Agent), Ralph Garman (Detective).

Kevin Smith is ever interesting, ever frustrating filmmaker. There was a time – in the late 1990s – that Smith looked like he may become one of the great writer-directors of his generation, but that somehow never came to fruition. Every time he seems to take a step forward, the next film ends up being a step backwards. His last film was Red State – a horror film about a group of horny teenagers who get in over their head with a backwoods family of religious nuts that eventually draws in the FBI. That film wasn’t great – but it was an interesting one, basically saying that all three groups – the teenagers, the religious nuts, the government – were all equally idiotic. I said at the time that while I didn’t think Red State was a great horror film, that it showed promise – and that I wanted to see Smith work in the genre again, because he had a great horror film in him. So now, three years later, comes Tusk – which brings Smith back to the horror genre, like I wanted, but definitely is a step in the wrong direction. The film has a ridiculous premise – but very clearly could have been a great guilty pleasure, if nothing else. Instead, Smith doesn’t really take his premise at all serious, and ends up making a smug, superficial film, that tries to be both funny and scary – and a few isolated moments aside, doesn’t achieve either.

The film stars Justin Long as Wallace Bryton – an asshole professional podcaster. The premise of his show – the Not-See Party (ha-ha, a Nazi joke) is that he goes out on the road, and meets weird people, and then comes back to the podcast and tells his partner, Teddy (Haley Joel Osment) all about it. His latest trip is going to take him to Winnipeg (there seems to be no reason for setting much of the film in my beloved Canada, except the fact that Smith seems to think people saying eh and aboot is hilarious). The person he is supposed to meet – a kid who cut his own leg off while showing off his sword moves – has killed himself – which Wallace doesn’t care about, except that he now no longer has a show. But in a bar, he sees an ad on a bulletin board, written in long hand, by a man claiming to have lots of stories. This seems like a good bet, so Wallace calls the man on the phone, and then goes up to see him. Howard Howe (Michael Parks) is the kind of crazy eccentric that Wallace needs for his show – especially when he starts telling his stories, including one where as a young man he was shipwrecked on an island for months on end, with a walrus he named Mr. Tusk, as his only companion (who, of course, he fell in love with). But Howard is more than eccentric – he’s batshit crazy, and has a plan for Wallace. He drugs him, cuts off his leg, and through a series of surgeries tries to turn Wallace into a human walrus to recapture his love. Meanwhile Teddy, and Wallace’s girlfriend, Ally (Genesis Rodriguez), team up with a crazy French Canadian detective (Johnny Depp, playing a weirdo – but hey, it’s a different kind of weirdo than his typical one, as this one has a French Canadian accent) to try and track down what happened to him.

There are a few isolated moments in the film that work quite well – a creepy moment when Long, now full walrus, has to learn to swim, and sees firsthand what will happen if he doesn’t – is the only legitimately scary moment in the film. The comedy in the film doesn’t work much better – and everything with Depp could have been cut completely, as it drags the film to a grinding, awkward halt right as it should be ramping up. The film is trying to have something clever to say about humanity – Wallace is an asshole, who has changed with success, and now no longer feels anything, which Ally doesn’t like – she wants the old Wallace back. But he needs to become a walrus to become human again – and by then it’s too late.

The premise of the movie is, of course, ridiculous. But that doesn’t mean it couldn’t have worked. In particular, Smith gets fine performances by Long and especially Parks, who realizes how ridiculous it all is and dives headlong into his performance. The problem with the film, I think, is that Smith quite clearly thinks the whole damn thing is a joke. During the end credits, he plays a clip of his own podcast with Scott Mosier, where they lay out of the plot for Tusk (at a time when he didn’t think he would ever make it) – and he laughs all the way through it. That makes a certain degree of sense – it is ridiculous – but it’s hard to take a movie seriously when the movie itself doesn’t. It would be easier if it was a straight ahead comedy – but the ending of the movie goes for something deeper – but Smith is still holding everything at arm’s length, basically sitting back and laughing at his own movie. And if he doesn’t take it seriously – then why the hell should we. This is one of the year’s worst.

Movie Review: Red State

Red State ** ½

Directed by: Kevin Smith.

Written by: Kevin Smith.

Starring: Michael Parks (Abin Cooper), Melissa Leo (Sara), Michael Angarano (Travis), Nicholas Braun (Billy-Ray), Kyle Gallner (Jarod), John Goodman (Joseph Keenan), Stephen Root (Sherrif Wynan), Matt L. Jones (Deputy Pete), Alexa Nikolas (Jesse), Betty Aberlin (Abigail), Kerry Bishé (Cheyenne), Ralph Garman (Caleb), Molly Livingston (Fiona May), James Parks (Mordechai), Haley Ramm (Maggie), Jennifer Schwalbach Smith (Esther), Elizabeth Tripp (Melanie), Kevin Pollak (ASAC Brooks).

Up until Red State, Kevin Smith has only made comedies. But his new movie has been a long gestating horror project. It doesn’t come as much of a surprise that Smith would want to make a different type of movie after all these years – after all, it has been 17 years since Clerks came out, and there’s only so many dick and fart jokes you can make before you grow weary. What did surprise me is that Smith, who has always been a better writer than director, on this project is just the opposite. Red State has a nice visual look that harkens back to the horror films of the 1970s. But it is the writing that lets him down. This is a movie where you can tell that Smith is fed up with the stupidity he sees everywhere in American culture – and yet the movie feels rather toothless and obvious – and perhaps worse still, dated.

The movie is about three lunk headed teenage boys, somewhere in the Southern USA, who decide to go see a woman they’ve met online the next town over. She’s interested in having sex with all three of them – at the same time. On the way there though, they sideswipe a parked car, but decide to deal with that problem later, and continue onto their destination. When they get to the trailer, they discover that the woman they are to meet doesn’t exactly look like her picture, but is instead a little bit older, and rough around the edges. This is Sara (Melissa Leo), but the boys don’t much care. One woman is as good as any other when you’re horny, teenage virgin. What they discover though is that they have not been lured there for sex, but instead as human sacrifices.

The head of the Sara’s family is her father, Abin Cooper (Michael Parks), a fire and brimstone preacher who takes his small, but devout followers out to picket the funerals of gay men – just so that we, and their loved ones, know that they are rotting in eternal hellfire. But that is no longer enough for Cooper and his family. They have decided to take the next logical step – killing homosexuals themselves, just like they are sure God wants them to. The three teenage boys aren’t really gay, but they’re close enough. After all, the three of them were will to fornicate with a woman at the same time, which is close enough to gay for Cooper.

Law enforcement gets involved, when they notice the car that was supposedly in the accident earlier on Cooper’s property. It isn’t long before the ATF, led by Joseph Keenan (John Goodman) arrive on the scene, and on orders from higher ups, start to slaughter the family. These people are terrorists, and there are to be no survivors – not even the children on the compound.

My problem with Red State is that it all feels like something transported from the 1990s. Picketing gay funerals and Waco Texas style raids by the inept Federal government feel like something out of the past here. America has moved on, at least a little bit, and while there are still anti-gay bigots everywhere, it seems to me that Smith is making rather easy targets out of the Cooper family. If he really wanted to be provocative, he should have had the family killing Muslims instead. I don’t hear very much about Southern preachers picketing gay funerals anymore (although, I’m sure there are some nutcases who do), but I do hear about protests against Mosques being built, and an idiot preacher in Florida holding a Koran burning party.

The point of Red State is to show that everyone in the movie is stupid. The end credits split the actors into three segments – sex (represented by the three movies), religion (represented by the Cooper family) and politics (represented by the ATF agents). We expect horny, teenage boys to be stupid. Hell, it’s practically their responsibility to be stupid, and the three boys in this movie certainly qualify. But we should expect our religious and political leaders to be more intelligent – to appeal to us on a deeper level, and be of higher moral standing. Smith’s point is that we can’t. Everyone’s stupid.

He may well be right, but he has picked an overly obvious way to show this. As the movie progresses, it moves from teen sex farce, to horror into action, and the transitions don’t go quite as easily as we hope. Gallons upon gallons of blood are split during the course of the movie, but after a while (particularly in the firefight that takes up the last third of the movie at least), it all becomes repetitive. Yes, this could well be the best directed movie that Smith has ever made, but it rings hollow.

There are moments to love though. Michael Parks digs into Smith’s dialogue – especially in an early scene in his church, and holds the cameras and the audience’s attention as he spews out his absolute hatred towards the world. John Goodman is in fine form as the ATF agent, who knows what he has been asked to do, is wrong, but does it anyway. He doesn’t care about right or wrong – at least not at first – but on covering his own ass.

In general though, I hope to see more films like Red State coming from Kevin Smith. He does his thing in comedies, and its fine, but it is starting to wear a little thin. Red State shows he can do more than simply tell dick jokes. Now, he just has to figure out a better way to say it. Red State shows promise from Smith if he wants to continue down this path – and I kind of hope he does.

Movie Review: Cop Out

Cop Out * ½
Directed By: Kevin Smith.
Written By: Robb & Mark Cullen.
Starring: Bruce Willis (Jimmy Monroe), Tracy Morgan (Paul Hodges), Seann William Scott (Dave), Cory Fernandez (Juan), Sean Cullen (Captain Romans), Kevin Pollak (Hunsaker), Adam Brody (Barry Mangold), Guillermo Díaz (Poh Boy), Michelle Trachtenberg (Ava), Rashida Jones (Debbie), Jason Lee (Roy), Francie Swift (Pam).

Kevin Smith has always been a better writer than director. His writing style, although as filled with fart and dick jokes as any big Hollywood comedy, has always been distinctive to him. In short, you can tell a Kevin Smith dick joke from anyone else’s. He has also always been able to create real characters – characters you actually care about – in between all those jokes. As a director, he isn’t bad – but he isn’t great either. He has a point and shoot style that I have always felt worked for his movies as well as any other style would have. Besides, I am usually too busy laughing to care much how he shot the movies.

Smith didn’t write his new film Cop Out, and you can tell. The film at times plays like something trying to copy Smith’s writing style – minus all the dick jokes as there are precious few here – and not quite getting it right. The characters are cookie cutter creations – nothing really defines them beyond what the screenplay requires of them. And as a director Smith just isn’t quite able to pull it all off. Between all the jokes are action sequences that do not work. In short, Cop Out is a mess.

The movie is about two cops who have been partners for 9 years. Jimmy (Bruce Willis) is a veteran – gruff, intractable and willing to do anything to get results. Paul (Tracy Morgan) seems less experienced (although since he has been partners for 9 years with Jimmy, he shouldn’t), and more all over the map – a bumbling idiot in short. When Jimmy needs to pay for his daughter’s wedding, he goes to sell his prized baseball card – worth upwards of $80,000 – but ends up in the middle of a robbery at the card store, and loses it. So they go and try and track down the card – taking them deeper and deeper into the drug trade.

Willis seems bored in the movie. I know that he is trying for a deadpan comic tone in the film – but aside a few isolated incidents, he doesn’t get that tone down correctly. After so many cop movies, he should be perfect at this – sending up his screen image like Robert DeNiro in Analyze This or Marlon Brando in The Freshman. But he doesn’t get it right. Morgan on the other hand is both the films greatest asset, and its biggest liability. No, you do not believe for a second that this bumbling idiot could be a cop for as long as he has, and risen through the ranks as much as he has. Morgan plays the character as a not too distant relative from his clueless celebrity on 30 Rock (on which, Morgan is brilliant). Yet once I realized that Morgan’s performance is completely wrong for the character, and just sort of rolled with it, I quite enjoyed him. Let it not be said that Morgan is not a funny actor – he is, and in moments he is hilarious here – particularly when he is arguing with the great Seann William Scott (another highlight roll as parkour enthusiast and thief). Kevin Pollack and Adam Brody have a few nice moments as well as a sort of rival partnership to Willis and Morgan. And Jason Lee can play his asshole character in his sleep, but doesn’t here, and also rings a few chuckles out of his character.

The problem with the movie is that the moments that work is so few and far between – separated by long periods where absolutely nothing on screen works at all. The movie never builds any comic momentum, as there is so much crap in it. The Mexican gangsters in the film are all one dimensional and played like cartoon caricatures and not real people. Worse still, they are never even funny.

Smith has said that it is getting harder for him to get his own movies made, and I believe him. It seems like it isn’t really the small movies that are getting shut out in Hollywood these days – there are dozens of indies released every year – but the middle sized movies. The ones that Smith made for $10 million that turned a nice little profit but not much else. So I do understand why he jumped at the opportunity to make a big studio movie with a major star like Willis. And judging on the opening weekend box office, Smith will have the biggest hit of his career with this film. Hopefully what that means is that Smith will be able to get one of his own movies made. If he doesn’t, than he made Cop Out for no reason.

God and the Cinema Part III: Kevin Smith

It may seem odd that I chose Kevin Smith for the third part of this series, after dealing with Ingmar Bergman, Stanley Kubrick and Steven Spielberg in the first two installments, but I actually believe that Smith’s film represent a certain modern take on religion, particularly in the Western world. It is clear that almost no one waits until marriage anymore before having sex, and yet a lot of people are still consider themselves religious. Lots of Catholics use birth control, even inside of a marriage, even though the Church tells them not to. In short, things have changed. What used to be considered “sinful” is now almost accepted practice. When I went in with my future wife to meet the priest who was going to marry us, he didn’t bat an eye when he found out we were already living together. No lecture, no tsk tsk, nothing. Kevin Smith, in a very real way, represents this idea of still having religious beliefs in the modern world, even as we seem to reject some of the basic tenets of the Church and it's teachings.

For this article, I am going to concentrate of two of Smith’s films – Chasing Amy and Dogma, as I believe they are most overt about religion of any of his films. They also have the added advantage of being far and away his best two films.

I’ve always thought that Chasing Amy was essentially Smith’s version of Scorsese’s Who’s That Knocking At My Door? In Scorsese’s film, J.R. (Harvey Keitel), dumps the girl he is in love with (even calls her a “whore”), because she was raped. In his mind, she must have done something to ask for it. She is not a virgin, so she is no longer “pure”, and he cannot possibly marry her. He has two ideas about women – they are either “broads” or “girls”. A broad is a woman you can fuck, but not marry, a girl is a woman you can marry but not fuck (at least, presumably, until you are married).

Something similar happens to Holden (Ben Affleck) in Chasing Amy. Now, the movie is set 30 years later, so the definition of what makes a girl a “whore” has changed, but what hasn’t changed is the reaction of the man. When Holden meets Alyssa (Joey Lauren Adams), she is a lesbian. Yet, the two of them hookup anyway, and it doesn’t really bother him. She was a lesbian, now she isn’t; it’s not a big deal. But what drives Holden over the edge is when he finds out that Alyssa has had sex with men before. Even still, he’d be okay with that, but the story he hears is that in high school, she was involved in a three way with two other guys. This throws him over the edge. He yells at her, tells her they were using her, and essentially calls her a whore. He tries to explain that it was high school, she was experimenting, and it doesn’t mean anything now. It’s not like she’s still fucking two guys at once on a regular basis. She’s with him now, and the past doesn’t matter. Holden doesn’t see it that way.

Instead, Holden comes up with a “brilliant” idea. In his mind, he cannot get past the fact that she has done something in her past that he hasn’t. So he wants to level the playing field. His idea is that he and his friend Banky (Jason Lee) will have a three way with her. This way, he’ll have done something similar to her so they can get past it and Banky may finally be able to admit that he’s gay. It shouldn’t matter to Alyssa, because she has already done the same thing in the past anyway, so what’s the difference?

What Holden doesn’t understand, because he’s an idiot, is that while Alyssa never felt like a whore for what she did in high school, that is precisely what she would feel like if she did this for him. She determined a long time ago that this was not what she wanted. What she wants is Holden, and if he cannot accept her, then it’s over.

Chasing Amy isn’t an overtly religious movie (I think the only time the world Catholic is spoken is when Jason Lee says “I should have dated more Catholic girls in high school. As it is, I have no ‘And then she removed her jumper stories’”.), but I do think it speaks to something that at least some Catholics still go through. The idea that the girl you’re going to marry has to be “pure” has probably gone out the window for most Catholic men these days, but there is still a line somewhere. Holden draws his line, and it costs him the woman he’s in love with. The same basic thing happens in Scorsese’s films from 30 years before. The line may have moved, but it’s still there. In his own way, Smith is exploring the same issue that the greatest director in history has explored for much of his career.

Dogma is a much more “religious” movie, and it makes no effort to hide that. The film is about the last descendent of Jesus (Linda Fiorentino), who works at an abortion clinic, who is sent on a mission from God to prevent two angels who have been banished from heaven (Ben Affleck and Matt Damon) from walking through an archway that would forgive their sins, and let them back into heaven. Since God has promised to honor whatever is Holy on Earth being Holy in Heaven, this would prove that God is Fallible; it would mean the end of the world.

While I think that Chasing Amy shows Smith struggling with his own sexual morality – which has at least in part been shaped by the Church – Dogma is more concerned with looking for answers to the bigger questions about God. How do you reconcile a book that is 2,000 years old with the modern world? That is essentially what every character in the movie is trying to do.

Affleck’s angel is angry with God that he gave humans so much more than he ever gave them. They are free to do what they please – they can piss away their lives, and choose not even to believe if they want to. He knows that what he’s doing will destroy humanity, and he’s okay with that. Damon plays an Old Testament angel in a New Testament world. He doesn’t know why God doesn’t bring down his wrath more often, so he takes it upon himself. Yet, he still loves God, and his creation. He just believes that some people need to be punished.

The Church itself is represented by Cardinal Ignatius Glick (played, in a genius stroke of casting by George Carlin). They are trying to “modernize” the Church, to make it less scary. In addition to the arch, that will instantly forgive your sins, they have decided to replace the crucifix, which is “too violent”, with a Buddy Jesus – who is smiling and giving a big Thumb’s Up. The Church is losing relevance, and they need to do something, right?

And Fiorentino is much like Jesus himself. Allow me to compare her to a Scorsese character again; in saying that by working in an abortion clinic, although she is Catholic, is similar to the idea suggested in Scorsese’s The Last Temptation of Christ, where as a carpenter, Jesus makes crosses for people to be crucified on. They both know that God would be unhappy with their decision, but they do it anyway. By the end of both films though, the character has accepted their destiny.

All of these characters are struggling with their own relationship with God, and what that means in their lives. I think the basic message in the film that everyone needs to find their own path. Everyone's relationship with God is different. It doesn't so much matter WHAT you believe, but instead, it matters that you DO believe.

In a way, I have been disappointed with every Kevin Smith film he has done subsequent to Dogma. True, I have enjoyed them all (even Jersey Girl – deal with it), and yet, like I sometimes feel about Quentin Tarantino, there has been a regression in his films. With Chasing Amy and Dogma, Smith explored some rather complex moral issues. The fact that he did so in an entertaining and comedic way in no way lessens the fact that he was dealing with his own personal issues in each film.

But truly, has he done that since? I can watch Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back, Clerks II, Zack and Miri Make a Porno at any time, and enjoy them. Yet to me, this represents Smith regressing into that kid on the playground who gets a kick out of saying “naughty” words. There is nothing really wrong with that, and yet I do think it ultimately lessens the value of his subsequent films. At one time, even Martin Scorsese saw Smith as a worthy successor to himself. I wonder if anyone still feels that way.