Jay & Silent Bob Strike Back

Director: Kevin Smith
Year Released: 2001
Rating: 2.5

The best movie this year written by a 15-year-old boy. Dick and fart and homo jokes by the dozens - oddly, a lot of them are quite funny (I have a depraved sense of humor). When it sticks to flat out juvenilia and bawdy Porky's-type yuks, it seems to work, but when anyone actually has to say something of meaning, or try to "act" ... oy, does it get ugly (case in point: the ending sequence with Mark Hamill and a subsequent shoot-out - all of it painful). Some of its funnier bits are borrowed from Smith's other four films (the ensuing result feels more like outright pastiche), and the whole thing, in retrospect, is more-or-less a vanity-trip. The guest cameos are often outstanding if merely diversionary - Gus Van Sant showing up, and counting stacks of money, is a riot.