Watching the upcoming Kevin Smith movie "Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back", I found myself coming down with a headache of a type that I recognised, and not just from the earlier Kevin Smith movies "Mallrats" and "Dogma".
Smith made his debut with the ultra low-budget "Clerks", and also turned out the mostly sharp "Chasing Amy". But when he tries to work on a more expansive canvas, he winds up floundering, his genuine talents for off-key observational comedy sinking slowly under his self-indulgent love of comic book/"Star Wars" trivia, pointless celeb cameos, and topical pop culture references. You watch the films with an overwhelming sensation that the film maker is having more fun than you are in the audience.
But it's unfair to blame Smith for the sub-genre, since there have always been masses of these things. The template can be found in the early film vehicles of the Marx brothers, which have most of Smith's failings - aside from the "Star Wars" thing, obviously - but get by because three out of the four Marxes are genuine comic geniuses with personalities big enough to pull together the worst gags (and a high percentage of great ones) into an anarchic sprawl that approaches something like bliss.
The problem really came in the 60s, when this style of comedy was married to the fondness for the epic that has always afflicted the movies. Stanley Kramer's slapstick behemoth "It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World" remains the best known of the super-stuffed comedies, but there was also "The Great Race", "Casino Royale", "Skidoo", "The Hallelujah Trail", and many other would-be funnies that are now relegated to the small hours of cable TV movie channels.
In a strange way, I like most of these movies - in fact, I'd prefer to watch "Casino Royale" again than any proper Bond film with Roger Moore or Pierce Brosnan. Drifting back to Kevin Smith, an odd thought occurs. In ten years' time, will I watch "Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back" on TV and start laughing?
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