Even if the Smith "brand" doesn't mean anything to you, Movie Poop Shoot will be a must-read for movie fans since Jeffrey Wells announced today he will move his "Hollywood Confidential" column from Reel.com to MPS beginning September 3. "I'll be joining a team of feisty, tip-top malcontents over there and the whole endeavor is going to whup ass, I swear … in fact, it already does," Wells says in today's column, which provides a tidy look at the most promising movies slated for the rest of the year.
As regular CS readers know, I refer to Wells quite often in my posts because he has consistently been one of the shrewdest, most perceptive film columnists (part reporter, part critic) around for many years now -- with Reel since August '99; Mr. Showbiz and various others before that). In fact, if I was restricted to one movie article per day, "Hollywood Confidential" would easily be my choice. Full disclosure: I became an even bigger fan of Wells when I was working on an article for The Daily Iowan about a year-and-a-half ago. I e-mailed him to see if he had any comment on the news that Loews had raised its prices for a movie ticket to $10 in New York City. Of course, I didn't expect a response. I not only got an e-mail back -- the same day, no less -- but Wells gave me what we journalists like to refer to as a "killer" quote.
"New York City movie theaters have always been slightly higher, so it's no surprise they're the first to hit the $10 mark. [Loews is] basically charging moviegoers to help pay its bank loans that it took out to pay for its huge expansions. It used to be $9.50 in certain NYC theaters; now it's $10. Big deal."
"Instead of an average evening at the movies with a date costing $33 -- two tickets for $19 plus $15 on popcorn and drinks for two, not counting parking -- it'll now cost $34. Compare that with renting a DVD and watching it at home with your girlfriend and microwave popcorn, which maybe costs $8 or $9 altogether. Why do people continue to pay $33 and $34? Because it's more fun to see a movie in a theater, and guys have a better shot at getting laid if they take their girlfriends out (to dinner, before or after the movie) than if they just invite them over to their place.
Amen. Wells' last column for Reel will run this Friday. If you're completely bored, below is a re-print of my original review of Jay & Silent Bob (published 8/27/01).
* I like Kevin Smith's films, but even I'll admit to some skepticism when I first heard he was making a movie centered on the vulgar antics of Jay and Silent Bob.
The dimwitted duo, played by Smith and Jason Mewes, has appeared in all four of Smith's previous films, usually with hilarious results. Arguably the funniest scenes in Clerks, Smith's low-budget debut, were those featuring Jay and Silent Bob assaulting customers outside the Quick Stop with their politically incorrect spewings. Nevertheless, as good as they were as supporting characters in Smith's View Askew universe, one had to wonder how their act would play out over 90 minutes. Let's face it, giving Jay and Silent Bob their own movie is akin to "Norm" and "Cliff" getting their own sitcoms after "Cheers" was canceled, and we all know how that turned out.
Fortunately for us -- and Smith -- Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back might just be his funniest film yet, even if it does at times feel like one big in-joke.
After taking heat from the Catholic Church for Dogma, Smith sets his satirical sights here on a less-esteemed, but perhaps equally powerful, institution -- Hollywood. The story follows Jay and Silent Bob as they trek from Jersey to L.A. to stop Miramax from making a movie based on the Bluntman & Chronic comic book for which they were the inspiration. If you're already a little confused, go rent Chasing Amy, and it'll start to make some sense.
Admittedly, it helps to be a fan of -- or at least to have seen -- the bulk of Smith's past work to truly appreciate this movie. And even when he isn't referencing his own movies, he is usually catering his humor to movie geeks much like himself.
Perhaps the funniest example is when Jay and Silent Bob finally make it to Hollywood, only to stumble onto the set of Good Will Hunting 2: Hunting Season. While Miramax golden boys Matt Damon and Ben Affleck -- a Smith regular who appears here as himself and his Chasing Amy character -- rip each other for some of their less-inspired movie choices, director Gus Van Sant sits quietly in a corner counting a huge pile of cash. Van Sant was known for edgy, indie pics such as My Own Private Idaho and Drugstore Cowboy before going mainstream with Hunting, which was followed by his disastrous remake of Psycho and the saccharine Finding Forrester.
Like Dogma, Jay and Silent Bob does lose some momentum because of its convoluted plot. There's a mostly boring, unnecessary sequence in the middle in which our heroes are persuaded by a gorgeous gang of international jewel thieves, featuring Bring It On's Eliza Dushku and American Pie's Shannon Elizabeth, to steal a monkey from a pharmaceutical lab (don't ask). Smith spends way too much time showing the Charlie's Angels wannabes doing Matrix-like backflips as they steal a loot of diamonds from a nearby bank (again, don't ask). Fortunately, this plot distraction is salvaged when "Saturday Night Live's" Will Ferrell shows up as a bumbling federal wildlife marshal trying to reclaim the stolen monkey.
I read one critic who blasted Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back, remarking that it will be "mostly incomprehensible in 50 years." I'm not sure he's right, but even if he is, maybe that isn't such a bad thing. You've got to give credit to Smith for producing a film that so perfectly captures the time in which it was made. You might miss some of the movie references, but unless you've been sleeping through the past 20 years of pop culture, Smith's irreverent brand of humor should ring true. *
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