It would probably be wrong to say that Kevin Smith speaks for my generation. He certainly has, as his production company name tells us, a View Askew, and that means that we'd all have to have the same sort of skewed view if he spoke for my generation. While it might be that we all see things somewhat off-center, I'm not convinced that we see things from the same off-center angle. Even so, while Kevin Smith doesn't speak for my generation, he certainly has the ability to speak to my generation — telling us things in a way we want to hear them.
Miramax is now releasing as a boxed set three of Smith's films on Blu-ray – Clerks (1994), Chasing Amy, and Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back. It may seem like an odd group of Smith films to put together (it most likely has to do with which films Miramax has the rights to), but all the stories of all three films do take place in the same universe.
Clerks, Smith's directorial debut, is a terribly low budget piece, the vast majority of which takes place in a convenience store and which, as the title suggests, revolves around the lives of two clerks, Dante (Brian O'Halloran), who works at the convenience store and Randal (Jeff Anderson), who works at the video store next door. It is a film in which surprisingly little happens. Dante spends much of his time complaining, Randal spends much of his time cursing.
The success of Clerks, of all three of these films, rests not on what happens, but how it all unfolds via the dialogue. Smith, who wrote all three films, has a unique use of language. At its best, Smith's writing is full of smart references to all forms of pop culture – the dialogue is profanity laden but still smart. At its worst, the dialogue is full of references that were dated by the time the film hit the big screen and still profanity laden.
As smart and funny and low budget wonderful as Clerks is with its ability to tap into the ennui of apathetic, lazy, slackers from the New York suburbs, Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back takes the stance that more is more. It takes two recurring characters from earlier Smith films, the titular Jay (Jason Mewes) and Silent Bob (Smith himself), and moves them front and center as they travel across the country to stop a film based on comic book characters which are, in turn, based on them from getting made.
It is certainly possible to argue that Jay and Silent Bob are two of the funniest characters in Smith's earlier films (they appear in both Clerks and Chasing Amy as well as others), but – as is acknowledged within the film itself – the notion of the two of them carrying a film is a little far-fetched, it also doesn't come off quite as well as one would hope. The characters, as with many supporting characters in sitcoms, are funny as supporting characters.
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