How does Kevin Smith make all these dumb Jay and Silent Bob movies (Clerks, Mallrats, Chasing Amy, Dogma, etc)? Now don’t get me wrong. Some of them (or parts of them) are pretty funny. They just seem like something my fraternity brothers might have thrown together with a camcorder if they happened to have grown up with Ben Afflick, Matt Damon, Joey Lauren Adams and Jason Lee.
not to say I dislike Kevin Smith movies, but in a world where they keep making The Land Before Time movies, anything’s possible . . .
I suppose Animal House, Shanghai Noon, and Caddyshack are the high point of the art? 
Here’s my guess…
Kevin Smith is a geek. A comic loving, un-repentant geek. Geeks dig him, because we “get” his humor. Either you grew up with guys like Jay and Silent Bob (and had to hang out with them because you weren’t cool…) or you didn’t.
Heaven help me… Kevin Smith is my dream man… smart, funny, and a geek…
Ok. Kevin Smith’s first film, Clerks, was a classic example of the dangerous combination of film student and credit card. He financed it on a shoestring budget, and it’s very much something a bunch of college kids might have thrown together, except these college kids ended up getting a final grade on it.
Hollywood exec sees this at a film festival, likes, tells Mr. Smith that they’ll distribute and even give him a real budget so he can go make that movie for real. KS, being strongly influenced by the John Hughes “Brat Pack” era of the bawdy teen comedy, goes on to make Mallrats. It does less than stellar business at the box office, but that works out to be a good thing for Kevin, as it further solidifies his status as a “cult filmmaker”.
His next film, Chasing Amy was his attempt at a more serious romance movie. The antics and contrivances of Mallrats were dropped in favor of more serious real life issues.
Kevin Smith has described Dogma as a Pro-Catholicism, Pro-Faith, Morally Uplifting Dick and Fart Joke movie. Of course, the Catholic Church itself disagreed when they first read a leaked draft of the script that had been circulating on the internet a year or two before the film ever went into production. Due to the controversy over it, he ended up having to seek alternate distribution, because his usual distributer Miramax, and their parent company Capitol Cities/Disney, wanted to wash their hands of it.
Now Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back (originally titled Clerks 2: Hardly Clerkin’) was a flat out stupid popcorn movie comedy vehicle for the two characters who were in the entire “New Jersey Saga”, Jay and Silent Bob. There were no real excuses for it.
His next one Jersey Girl, is not going to feature Jay or Silent Bob at all. It’s meant to be somewhat autobiographical, centered around the life lessons he’s learned rasing his baby daughter.
Too late. He’s taken. And having heard the story about the first time he got it on with his wife, even though he was in agony from a zipper-and-dry-humping-induced fleshwound on his penis at the time, the tubby coat wearing biatch has it bad for his wife.
Yeah yeah yeah… she’s nothin’… she doesn’t love comics like I do, Kev!
Actually, when I watched the DVD extras for Jay & Silent Bob I was stunned by how much his daughter and mine look alike. Even my hubby (who doesn’t “get” KS at all) said “Holy crap, she looks like Littlepotomus”!
…oh yes, he will be mine…
Uggh. I’ll never understand the fanboy cult that has accrued around this guy’s movies. Granted, he has an ear for intelligent though stylized dialogue and has a wicked wit but I don’t think these come anywhere close to offsetting his weaknesses as a film maker.
The man has absolutely no idea what to do with the camera and the bulk of his scenes seem to consist of static, grungy looking two-shots. His love of dialogue also leads to endless scenes of exposition which only serve to emphasize how limited his visual palette truly is (this annoyed the fuck out of me during Dogma). It also doesn’t help that his hyper-articulate characters all start to sound the same after awhile. Articulate dick and fart jokes are, after all, still just dick and fart jokes.
I did enjoy Clerks despite flaws that I blamed on Smith’s limited budget and experience but as time has passed it’s become clear that those flaws betray a fundamental weakness in his talent as a director. For god’s sake man, hire a bloody DP! (and maybe a new editor). This is too bad because I still think he’s a pretty good writer.
I liked Chasing Amy bunches, Clerks was okay, and the rest were so bad that I attempted to gouge my eyes out with a spork.
With that being said, I still want to see Jersey Girl.
William Donohue & other conservative Catholics & groups did, but not the Church itself.
I’m a Rightist Libertarian RCC-respecting Protty Christian member of my local Assembly of God and I totally LOVED DOGMA.
Thinks he must be the only person on Earth who actually LIKED Jay and Silent Bob Strike back, as well as the rest of the Kevin Smith movies except for Mallrats.
I thought there were more of us, until this thread.
I watched part of Mallrats on USA the other day and laughed harder at the terrible overdubs of the naughty bits than I did the original film.
Best one:
Original Film: “All it took was a phat chronic blunt!”
TV Version: “All it took was a phat karate punch!”
Personally, I thought Dogma was a load of crap. I’m a huge fan of Clerks and Mallrats, though, and the Clerks animated series is just pure gold.
Clerks was funny, the rest were horrible.
Dear God! I’d pay money not to see that movie. Whenever Kevin Smith gets all earnest and introspective, it just makes all of his weaknesses as a writer that much more glaring. I hated hated Chasing Amy, and I can’t imagine how much worse it would’ve been had it not had the brief scenes with Jay & Silent Bob.
I read a review of one of his movies, and the reviewer got it right. He said that going to see a Kevin Smith movie is kind of like seeing your cousin in a school play; it’s amateurish, and all the errors are easy to see, but they’re so sincere about it that you just want them to succeed. Smith has that everyman/underdog quality about him; he’s a champion of the young white, tubby, suburban middle-class geek. If you see one of his movies, and especially if you’re a young white, tubby, suburban middle-class geek (like myself), you laugh at the funny parts and cut him some slack for the rest.
For the record, my favorite Kevin Smith movie is Mallrats. (Which few other people like.) And I liked Dogma a good bit, and am ashamed to admit that I appreciated Jay & Silent Bob Strike Back for what it was – a willfully, unashamedly rock-stupid stoner movie with hot chicks in leather catsuits. I just wish he’d lighten up on the dialog.
I dunno, I liked the fart story the best…
Original: “I just farted and she broke up with me. […] Well, she was going down on me at the time.”
TV Version: “I passed gas and she broke up with me. […] Well, we were making love at the time.”
I never could see the appeal of Kevin Smith movies. Given, I’ve only seen Dogma and parts of **Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back **. To me most of the humor seems rather juvenile, and his movies have a feeling of smugness, even when all they do is make dick and fart jokes.
I also think Kevin Smith needs to get over the fact he smokes pot(as a pot smoker, I cringe everytime I hear one of his stupid one-liner about pot).
Clerks was amusing but I just can’t figure out how he gets all these stars to show up for what seems to be a fairly cultish set of movies with amateurish production values. It’s like a cross between an IFC independent film and an live action episode of Southpark.
The premise was pretty dumb. Especially the theater at the end filled with every character from all his movies.
I did think the scene filming Good Will Hunting 2 was funny with Affleck and Damon making fun of each others movies.
Affleck: I hope this didn’t pull you away from another homosexual psychopath horsey riding touchie feely-fest
Damon: Did you even see Forces of Nature?
and so on.
I’ll never understand the geekish devotation that fanboys show this guy. Is it because he writes corny, hopelessly self-concious “hip” characters and dialogue? Because he makes so many stupid and pointless comic-book references in his films?
That said, I really liked Clerks and **Chasing Amy **.
I liked Clerks because it was a nice, fairly realistic breath of air when it came out…despite some stupid parts, Smith seemed to be really trying to replicate that phase of crappy, dead-end jobs that most of us have to go through in our youth.
Chasing Amy again suffered from many asinine parts, but on the whole was a really affecting love story to me. Again, the issue of jealousy/anger over a partner’s sexual history is a phase that a lot of young guys go through.
**Dogma was okay. ** Mallrats was crap.
**Jay And Silent Bob Strike Back ** was the biggest piece of shit I have ever seen. If it is possible to make a “comedy” any more lifeless and unfunny, I’d like to know how. It fits the example mentioned earlier about a moron frat boy and his friends being given a movie camera and allowed to run amuck, the difference being that any average frat boy could probably make a funnier film than this garbage.
Overall I see Smith in the same light as I see Henry Rollins…a person who’s only of mediocre talent, but has managed by sheer will and the force of their charm (Smith is a interesting personality, like Rollins) to implant themselves into the popular culture.