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100The best-looking, best-scripted and funniest of Smith's pictures, it's also Smith's sharpest.
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90In keeping with the Smith rules, the movie is irreverent, self-referential, twisted, cheap and tasteless. And, of course, I mean that as the highest compliment.
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80As Jay and Silent Bob, Jason Mewes and Kevin Smith are the perfect comedy team for smart, dirty-minded 15-year-olds, which means just about all of us.
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80A blast of comic irreverence that serves as a starring vehicle for two stoner characters who had previously been relegated to the sidelines.
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80Most of all, I enjoyed the picture's subtext, which is that Smith has become so sensitized to Internet abuse -- that the cathartic climax consists of tracking down bellicose posters (all of whom turn out to be adolescent dweebs) and pummeling the crap out of them.
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75Whether you will like Jay and Silent Bob depends on who you are. Most movies are made for everybody. Kevin Smith's movies are either made specifically for you, or specifically not made for you.
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75In addition to being his filthiest, this is his most free-associative movie. In spite of and because of its homemade look, it's also his funniest.
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75It's gratifying to see a comedy can have no redeeming social value yet be full of hearty laughs.
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75Sequels and fun don't often coincide, but this time they do.
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75It's deliciously warped, deceptively smart and undeniably funny. Isn't that enough?
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75A hit-or-miss affair that starts out wobbly and then gathers comic momentum.
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63The originality and intelligence that made Smith's "Clerks" and "Chasing Amy" such refreshing pleasures are all but absent.
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63Frisky, raunchy and frequently riotous.
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60At times fun but mostly maddeningly uneven, Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back feels less like a full-fledged movie than a side project Smith took on to amuse himself and his buddies.
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60A raunchy parody that's hip-deep in the mainstream it aims to rip, and sometimes does despite a glut of smug inside jokes.
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50The movie is sloppy and scattershot, and proud of it. It wears its slipshod, anything-for-a-laugh structure like a badge of honor: Smith is nothing if not self-deprecating.
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50It's hit-or-miss comedy of the very broadest sort, but those who groove on deciphering obscure film-geek in-jokes will find their work more than cut out for them.
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50I can't imagine how Smith can capture a big enough audience to pay off this private joke, but the inner geek in me had too much fun to care.
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50There are lots of hilarious, off-the-wall incidents, and the film has a likable freewheeling spirit to go with its knockabout plot. But the film isn't as remotely funny as it means to be.
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50This may be the greatest picture ever made for 14-year-old boys. Mr. Smith may have hit his target, but he aimed very low.
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40Smith's unrepentantly juvenile sense of humor leans heavily on elementary pop-culture parody, a particularly tiresome and parasitic form of humor that depends on an audience of smirking know-it-alls who can be trusted to snicker whenever they get the reference.
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40Only once, in a quick sketch of "Planet of the Apes" -- does the humor seem to spring from pure movie love. In nearly every other respect, the film is so lazy, solipsistic and overpleased with itself it's hard not to believe that this time the Evil Empire has won not just the battle, but the war.
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40This represents at least as much of an artistic setback for Smith as "Chasing Amy" and "Dogma" were advances.
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38Now that Smith has gotten these characters and jokes out of his system, here's hoping he can turn to material that doesn't require winking at the audience.
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38Typical of road comedies, it's a pastiche of sketches.
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38I don't know if the new movie is Smith's weakest. It's certainly his most disposable, a warmed-over hash of jokes that will have Mewes fans rolling with laughter and the rest of us rolling our eyes in disbelief.
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30This kind of wheel spinning comes from having the desire to speak but nothing much to say, and Smith, who's made a slight movie about his being a slight filmmaker, seems to know this.
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25Een fans of Jay and Silent Bob may find the story too slender and the jokes too repetitive to be much fun.
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20This is nothing more than a bare-assed fart in the face of Smith's fans.
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20Who wants to pay to see a movie so bad the actors and writer-director feel the need to keep reminding us of how bad it is?
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10Stunning in its guileless self-love, Smith's doodle-movie shows virtually no sign of being made for an audience. The 90-minute by-product of Smith's let's-shoot-a-movie pot party can be mystifying -- we've all stood soberly by as high friends guffaw at nothing in particular, but now we can pay for the privilege.