Film/Feature: C+
Mike Judge is one of those few creators who understands what makes people laugh in both animation, and live action. A good comedic mind would tell you that it doesn’t matter what the format is, and they’re right, but it’s rare to be able to toe that line and do it as successfully as Judge. He’s given us Beavis and Butthead, King of the Hill, and to many of you out there, he’s simply known as the man behind Office Space. It the latter’s more of your taste, then perhaps you might want to see how Judge’s cubicle dynamics go from the corporate buzzkill to the assembly line at Reynold’s Almond Extract.

Joel (Jason Bateman) is sexually frustrated CEO of a small extract company piddling about his routine life until he runs into the worst month of his life. A freak accident threatens to destroy the company and a two-bit scam artist (Mila Kunis) is pulling the strings. If only he could make it home before 8pm. After the clock strikes eight, his wife (Kristin Wiig) puts on the sweat pants and the chance of him getting lucky goes out the door. His best friend Dean (Ben Affleck), a bartender and Xanax pusher, comes up with a wild and elaborate plan to rid him of all of his troubles; except that Dean and plan should never be used in the same sentence.

Extract is a nice, bite-sized distraction that’s character-driven and doesn’t try so hard to be so outrageous that it becomes just another mind-numbing forgettable comedy. Unfortunately there’s not enough there to guarantee a spot amongst a must-see pile of films out there. It has its share of laughs that jab at workplace logic that never gets old–this time with a blue collar spin–but just because there’s nothing wrong with it, doesn’t make Extract a film you have to rush out and see. Think of a vineyard with a great wine that you love, and then you try one of the other wines in their lineup. It’s got a different direction to it, it’s not as robust, and it has similar notes, but it falls well-short of being a memorable wine. Well, Extract has plenty of positive things going for it, but it just falls short of being a memorable comedy.

What it does have going for it is that you know these people, you know this place and you know the characters that can aggravate you to no end. It’s not specific to one city or region of the country. It’s everywhere and Judge’s Extract has a way of taking what you know and feeding off of that familiarity in an enjoyable enough film. Just temper your expectations.

Video:C+
Miramax put Extract on blu-ray with a 1080p AVC-encoded transfer in its original 1.85:1 aspect ratio. Colors aren’t as terrific as you’d hope and most notably, the skin tones push towards a pink-orange area that needs some color correction. Blacks and contrast could have been stronger, deeper and more pronounced. Details and clarity sort of phase in and out at times, and the most discernible eyes will catch the spots where this happens. I’d hope for a better looking film and understand this is a small independent film we’re looking at, but the bottom line is that I’m not walking away too impressed by the video.

Audio:C+
Much like the film, there’s nothing really fancy about Extract’s 5.1 English DTS-HD audio track. It’s a mainly a dialogue-driven film, with music pushed to the front and surrounding channels. Suburban neighborhood and some factory noise also gets sent to the rear channels but the volume is turned down so low that you’d have to pump up the volume to really hear it from where you’ll likely be seated, so I was disappointed with the effort here although I expected Extract to be a low-key title to begin with. Other audio selections include: a French 5.1 Dolby Digital track and subtitles are available in English SDH, French, and Spanish.

Extras:D+
There’s not much to the extras of Extract, and no blu-ray exclusives. In fact, you’ll probably learn more about the film in this Mike Judge Q/A session.

Mike Judge’s Secret Recipe HD (11:00) A brief making-of EPK extra the interviews Judge and some cast members about the story of Extract.

Extended Scenes HD (4:00) are five scenes that do run long and were wisely edited.

Deleted Scene HD (0:37) One deleted scene was taken out involving a conversation between Dead and Joel on the “day after.”

Trailers HD previews for When in Rome, Surrogates, and the Boys are Back

Overall Shock Value:C+
I didn’t think much of Office Space after my first viewing but the more I saw it the more I enjoyed it. I never took my affection to the extreme that I’ve heard others share, but Extract is something different; it’s smaller and more intimate, which I found to be one of Extract’s more endearing qualities. Will I think rabid Office Space fans will see this on par with this fabled film? Probably not, but there are some good fresh moments in this film that many viewers should connect with. Extract is devoid of any substantial extras and this is not a blu-ray of high technical achievement. I’d still recommend Extract as a rental.

ON EXTRACT’S STORY AND CHARACTERS

While so many other comedies tend to shoot for these big company stories, you tend to reside in settings with small town folks as the main characters (King of the Hill, Office Space and now Extract) what draws you to these small town stories?

Mike Judge: I would say my stuff resides in suburbs of big towns also, or small towns that are near big towns. I guess that’s because I’ve mostly lived in places like that — Albuquerque NM, Richardson TX, etc. I think that a lot of writers in film and TV in the past have tended to come from NY or big east-coast cities, and there have also been great stuff written about really small hick towns, and so I feel like I can maybe bring a different perspective on things with a suburban setting.

Did you always have Jason Bateman in mind for the lead role?

MJ: I started writing this a long time ago – I think it was shortly after Office Space came out. I originally wasn’t thinking of any actor in particular, just writing it. Jason had done King of the Hill and I always liked him, but when I saw him in Arrested Development, I thought he would be perfect for this, and when I rewrote it and finished it, I was imagining him as the lead. It’s a similar character to what he did in AD, but I think Joel is a little less slick or something. Jason was the first actor I gave the script to and he said he liked it and wanted to do it, so it was him from the get go.

Even with all of the pressures Joel faces at home and at work what is it that makes him a successful boss?

MJ: I think what ultimately makes Joel a successful boss is that he genuinely likes making extract. For me, I enjoy directing movies, making animated TV shows, and in order to do that, you sometimes have to tell people to do things they don’t want to do, or make choices that people don’t agree with. And I really don’t enjoy telling people to do things they don’t want to do, but it goes with the territory. I think there are some bosses out there – and these would be bad bosses in my opinion – that are in it because they actually get off on telling people to do things they don’t want to do; they get some kind of weird pleasure out of making people do things for the sake of making them do things. They get off on the power of it all or something. I think Joel really likes making extract and seeing it get out there in stores and restaurants, and that informs all the decisions he makes, so it’s always coming from the right place. I think that’s how to be a good boss.

From the special features Jason and Ben talk about their long dialogue. How much did you let them improv or is it all from the page?

MJ: I like to let the actors feel like they can be loose with the script up to a point because I want them to feel comfortable and when they really get the character and what’s happening in the scene, then the improv wouldn’t drift too far anyway. I’m not really precious about my writing, but I usually find that in the editing room we end up pretty close to what was on the page. I think if you write good dialogue, it sounds like people spontaneously talking, so audiences think it’s improvised, which is a good thing I think. I would say in this movie, the most improv that would up in the movie came from Ben Affleck. He threw some stuff in there that I just loved and it wasn’t in the script.

Did Ben Afleck find it liberating to play a quirky supporting player for a change? He was great in the film–

MJ: You would have to ask him if he found it liberating, but it sure seemed like he did. I think he had a lot of fun doing it, and it was a blast for me to work with him on it. I really liked what he did. I had never met him before this and when I heard he wanted to do it, I was surprised at first – pleasantly so – and then when I met with him, he started telling me about a guy he knew growing up in Boston and he started imitating him and I just thought it was great. We did a read through of the script early on and I just loved watching him and Jason do these scenes and play off each other.

Was there instant chemistry when the actors began working together or did it take some time for them to gel?

MJ: For the most part it was instant. And most of them had already worked together or knew each other, so it all gelled nicely.

Was it your idea to cast rocker Gene Simmons as bench lawyer Joe Adler?

MJ: Yeah, I had originally described the character as looking like Gene Simmons with a pony tail and a suit and tie. I was kind of naive though, in that I thought no one would recognize him without the Kiss makeup on. I didn’t realize how huge the reality show was. The only time I had ever seen him without the makeup was on Politically Incorrect about 9 years ago and thought he would be great playing an agent or high-powered attorney.

One of the enjoyable performances was from Clifton Collins Jr. as Step. He’s been incredibly diverse this year, can you talk a little about him as an actor and what he brought to the film?

MJ: I love Clifton and have wanted to work with him for a while. I just never had a part that was right for him. I actually hadn’t thought of him for this part either. He usually plays a chicano gangster or a serial killer, so I hadn’t thought of him, but then he walked into the room with a trucker hat on, and suddenly he went from looking like a chicano gangster to Festus from Gunsmoke. I love him as a redneck. He also makes a great Romulan. He’s a true chameleon. And now he’s a big award-winning country music video director also, with Zack Brown Band.

Watching the special features on “Extract”, Mila Kunis mentioned that she may have been based on an actual person you know but curious, were the characters based off people you actually knew. And if so, how would you personally deal with a person so intrusive like Nathan?

MJ: No one is based specifically on one person, but I think most writers base characters on people they have known. The character of Nathan wasn’t any one specific person, but I did have a neighbor – a woman – who was a nightmare. It was in a gated community, so there was only one way out, and she would flag you down and just park herself in your window and just start talking. She would basically make it so you had a choice of either listening to her forever, or being rude and interrupting her, or even worse, pulling away while her arms were rested on your window.

There’s a dignity to the characters – and the work itself – in your film. Talk about establishing that element while at the same time finding the humor in the colorful characters.

MJ: That’s pretty important to me because I’ve worked these kinds of jobs, and I remember feeling like Hollywood was sometimes out of touch with us, and always appreciating it when it felt like a movie or TV show got something right – like there was someone out there in Hollywood who understood what most of us go through. I also used to feel like a lot of characters in movies and TV seemed to have endless cash and free time and you either didn’t know much about their job or they didn’t seem to have to have one. Finding the humor while still having some dignity to the characters is something that is also important to me. I don’t think about it that much; I’d like to think it comes naturally. To me it’s just like when I would sit around with my friends telling stories about people I work with and doing imitations of them and that sort of thing.

ON WRITING AND DIRECTING

In your previous films you’ve had a hand in directing, writing and producing. Which is your so-called labor of love out of the three?

MJ: I mostly like the writing and the editing, and I like when it’s over.

Animation or live action – which do you prefer, and why?

MJ: I think they’re more similar than you might think from the the point of a writer/director. I liked animation when I was just doing short films myself – doing everything myself. That was really satisfying work – making a film one frame at a time, getting it back from the lab and watching it for the first time. That was about as good as it gets I think.
Would you ever do a live action TV series or a another feature-length animated film?
Mike Judge: I would definitely like to do a live action TV series. I don’t know that I would do another feature-length animated film any time soon. Unless maybe it was a CG project.

How different in approach is your storytelling when it comes to animation and live action? Do you bank ideas that were too cinematic when you were working on HILL and GOODE FAMILY and save them for your feature work?

MJ: Actually they are pretty similar approaches. And you can actually get pretty cinematic in TV animation I think, as the Simpsons has done. I think I never got too cinematic with King of the Hill just because of the nature of the show and the characters, not really because it was animated.

Has the gradual embracing of your first two live-action movies made it easier to be patient for a film like “Extract” to find its audience and a fan following?

MJ: Yes. Also keeping the budget low on this has helped.

Did you shoot the film digitally? If so, how did you like/dislike the process of working in digital?

MJ: I shot it on all on film. In fact, we didn’t even do what’s called a “D.I.” which is how most films are finished nowadays. So if you saw it in the theater, you saw a print that was struck right off a negative. I actually like what happens to the look of film when you put it through that process.

What were the challenges of filming in a fully functional working factory?

MJ: Because we were on a tight budget, we had to shoot a lot of stuff while they were still working – they were really bottling. A lot of the background that you see in the movie is actually real people working – not extras. It was loud enough in there that they couldn’t hear us yelling “action” and “cut” and they just kind of got used to us being there, so I got some pretty natural acting in the background because they weren’t acting like they were working; they were really working.

I noticed in Extract that you were mostly able to stay away from pop culture references (outside of Dancing with the Stars), how difficult is it to write a story that doesn’t entail some of that dated material?

MJ: Well, when I first wrote the script, that reference was Will and Grace. That shows you how long ago I wrote it. I’m not big on pop culture references in general – probably because I’m pretty out of it lately, and I’m not great at doing that kind of comedy anyway. I also wrote it back when only a small percentage of the population had cell phones. That’s why there’s all this stuff in there with landlines, pay phones, busy signals, call waiting, etc. I was a little worried about that, but no one seems to have been bothered by it.

Have you enjoyed the resurgence of rated R comedies and has that opened up any other doors for you given that your material has a bit of an edge to it, or has it inspired you to go even edgier than what you’ve done previously?

MJ: I think there have been some great R comedies in the past couple years – The Hangover, Superbad, etc., but for me it’s not ever about edgy or not edgy. Something is either funny or interesting or it’s not, and sometimes something funny falls into the R rated territory, but not always. Some people are surprised to hear that Office Space is R rated, because it doesn’t seem that edgy I guess. I think anytime anyone has ever tried to be deliberately edgy, or to “push the envelope,” it’s usually sucked and lost money. I think there are a lot of movies that are hard-R rated that are really good and made money, but it’s because they are good, inspired movies.

Where does your fascination with groin jokes come from?

MJ: I do find it fascinating that a guy getting hit in the nuts always gets a laugh in movies – even from me – and I’m also not above using that for a cheap laugh myself. At some point, an evolutionary biologist should try to figure out why we laugh at that. I think if they figure out why a sense of humor and laughing even evolved in the first place – how that could possibly have contributed to survival of the species – then one of the first things they should figure out is why getting hit in the nuts always gets a laugh in movies and cartoons. I could go on about this for hours, but I won’t. I actually talked about this with Pulitzer Prize winning author Jared Diamond.

Would you ever consider doing a sequel to “Office Space”?

MJ: I kind of feel like this movie is sort of a follow up to Office Space. I based Office Space on my own experiences working in the cubicle world, and I based a lot of this on my experience being a boss and running what was basically an animation factory on Beavis and Butt-Head. I think when you go from complaining about the man keeping you down, to becoming the man, you realize that being the man is no picnic either. At one point a while back I considered doing a sequel to Office Space, but I wouldn’t do one now. Since that movie came out there have been two great TV shows – the British Office and the American one – and dozens of commercials set in cubicles, so I kind of feel like I wouldn’t want to go back to it at this point.

Thanks goes to Mike Judge, Miramax and Click Communications. Here is a full PCS review of the Extract Blu-Ray.

Miramax released this new blu-ray box set collecting three of Kevin Smith’s early films. Clerks, Chasing Amy and Jay and Silent Bob Strikes Back. The latter is an older blu-ray release but Clerks and Chasing Amy are new blu-ray releases, and of the two Chasing Amy is sporting lots of new extras. I’ve reviewed all three of them with links below.

Clerks Blu-Ray Review

Chasing Amy Blu-Ray Review

Jay and Silent Bob Strikes Back Blu-Ray Review

Year: 1996
Running Time: 113 Minutes
Rated: R
SRP: $39.99 Single release or $89.99 Kevin Smith 3-Pack
Studio(s): Miramax
Release Date: November 17, 2009

Film/Feature: A+

It’s not who you love, it’s how you love.

After taking an amusing detour in Mallrats, Smith got back to basics and made a personal film. Not in the traditional sense. Not with Meg Ryan or not like some cookie-cutter Kate Hudson film. Smith had one more chance to do a successful film or else be forgotten in the pile of directors that could have been big. (For the record, Kevin, I liked Mallrats) His goal was to make the movie Dogma, but before doing that, he had to get back on his feet, after being soundly defeated at the box office with Mallrats. Somehow, he crafted a story born out of his real relationship at the time with actress, Joey Lauren Adams and came up with Chasing Amy. Now, none of the actual events in the movie really happened in Smith and Adams’ life, but the film served as a metaphor for the crossroads that many relationships can’t seem to build a bridge over.

In this film Holden (Ben Affleck) and Banky (Jason Lee) are the best of friends, and partners in crime, comic book creators of the wildly popular comic, Bluntman and Chronic, based on the likeness of View Askewniverse dealers, Jay and Silent Bob. Holden is a conservative guy, firm in his convictions and traditional in every sense of the way, and then he meets Alyssa (Adams), a fellow independent comic creator, and falls head over heels for her. The problem is that she’s gay, and Holden’s pursuit of her troubles Banky and creates a rift that could damage years of friendship.

It’s a sordid love story that has tragedy written all over it but is neither predictable nor insensitive. Sex is spoken in vulgar fashion, but in a way that Smith so eloquently can do so well. Combined with raw performances by Adams, Affleck, and Lee, soon after the movie starts, you know that these characters will stick stay in your mind.

I found Chasing Amy so wonderful, that it restored faith that an American filmmaker could do something new with something that’s so fundamentally trite at that time in cinema. It was mature, ground-breaking and took such a strange angle at love that no one’s come close to touching it since. Chasing Amy starts out as a sex comedy that takes viewers to places they weren’t expecting, and without them knowing it, reveals the a genuine love shared between two sets of people in a way that will make you laugh one minute, and cry the next.

Take away all the dressing and Chasing Amy is not so much about sexual inadequacies, insecurities, or straight men trying to convert lesbians, as it is about getting close to the bond between two people and seeing how much or little of it can survive through and ultimately how fragile love can be.

Chasing Amy was a real shock to me at the time. I never knew that Smith had it in him to make a film like his, or that the actors had it in them to realize such full and complete characters. That’s why Chasing Amy continues to be an important film. It has soul behind the words, and that unrefined emotion behind the performances that’s rare in entertainment, and is worth revisiting time and again.

Video: A-
Much like the Clerks Blu-Ray, the new 1080p High Definition VC-1 Transfer preserves the original 1.85:1 aspect ratio and improves the overall look quite well, but it’s not going to hold up well when you compare it to a film that was shot with better equipment. Primary hues and synthetic color have a bit more juice behind them, while real world colors have a drab, muted quality. You can tell when different cameras were used at different scenes. Take Chapter 14 for instance, the establishing exterior shot of the restaurant is very clear, and then when the scene goes inside it looks fuzzy and and grainy. Then the scene goes back to inside Holden’s car and the detail jumps up again. So it would be nice to see a bit more consistency across the board but this variance is probably due to the way it was shot rather than the VC-1 encode. The color in this chapter also shows all the gradual ranges of blues, purples, golds, and ambers in the scene. It’s for the most part a fairly strong transfer. There’s still grain present throughout so for those who prefer that cinematic look will be happy in the overall aesthetics. Textures have a bit more detail so to actually see differences in clothing, furniture, etc. Remember that this film was made on $250,000 which is not a lot of money, folks when you’re talking about a color film. And while that’s a significant increase in the cost of Clerks, it’s still not ever going to look like million dollar film, so given the resources and the limits in technology used, Chasing Amy looks better than it ever has, but only serious videophiles are going to walk away from this blu-ray.

Audio: B+
Like the video presentation, the high definition English 5.1 DTS-HD Master Audio soundtrack is going to feel like a little bit of overkill for what’s a dialogue driven film. The audio gets an ample jolt in spots where music is played, or again in Chapter 14 when the rumble of the Thunderstorm rolls through. Raindrops can also be heard in the rear channels when both Alyssa and Holden argue in the rain. Another scene of note is Chapter 20 at the hockey rink. It’s probably the most active scene in the film creating a full scene around you. Other audio options include Spanish 2.0 Dolby Digital, German 5.1 DTS, and subtitles are available in English, English SDH, Spanish, German, Portuguese, Brazilian Portuguese, Bahasa, Maly, Mandarin, Farsi, Korean, Svenska, Norsk, Dansk, Suomi, Islenska, Russian, Turkish, and Romanian.

Extras: A-
For the first time, this film gets dusted off since the fine 1996 Criterion Collection. And as a huge fan of Criterion, I don’t think I’ll ever get rid of my old DVD, but that doesn’t mean I wouldn’t double-dip to get Chasing Amy on blu-ray. They’ve added lots of new material as exclusives to the blu-ray, but unfortunately they took off an incredible audio commentary by Kevin Smith, Scott Mosier, Ben Affleck, Jason Mewes, Robert Hawk, Jon Gordon and Vincent Pereira. There was also a booklet that was used in the Criterion case with an essay by Smith, chapter menu and “Who’s Who in the View Askewniverse” that’s sadly missing as well. What has been transported over is the following:

10 Deleted Scenes (25:01) SD Tell ‘em Steve Dave (3:43), Original Love Story (5:08), Bring on the Free Hooch (1:10), Money and Power (5:25), Help a Brother Out (0:48), The Right Man (1:37), Shoes? (1:02), Bitch, You’re Schooling No One (1:32), A More Tolerant Age (2:49), The Mata-Fucking Hari! (1:43).

Outtakes (4:36) SD is a gathering of laugh-inducing moments on the set.

Trailer (2:05) SD Theatrical trailer

Sneak Peeks for On Blu-Ray (1:02) Everybody’s Fine HD (2:32), Extract HD (1:19), and Surrogates HD (1:21).

Blu-Ray Exclusives
Now we come to the new stuff which most are in high definition (with the exception of the Q and A) and in 2.0 Stereo.

First is the New Audio Commentary by Kevin Smith and Producer Scott Mosier will be a treat for those who are familiar with Smith and Mosier’s online Smodcasts. This is the only place to hear Smodcast No. 97, which is the new commentary for Chasing Amy on Blu-Ray. None of the Smith’s commentaries could ever be claimed as being scene-specific, but from the beginning, the track gets derailed into a free-wheeling conversation that takes us from one tangent into the next and while I miss the directness and focus of the original commentary, it’s a track full of laughs, (where the duo’s sobriety can almost come into question) and puts a new spin on seeing Chasing Amy for the umpteenth time. If you like this Smodcast, you can find the others here.

Tracing Amy: The Chasing Amy Doc HD (1:22:00) Like in other documentaries about Smith’s films, this is an excellent look back at the landmark moments of Chasing Amy. Everything is discussed including the early groundwork of where the story would come from, sexual insecurities, Smith and Adams relationship that would be the foundation for the film, making a film about the gay lifestyle, bromance between Banky and Holden, having $250,000 to spend instead of $3 million, and the rise and fallout of Sundance including the damage it did to the friendships of View Askew.

Was it it something I Said? HD (18:00) is a very candid one-on-one conversation between Smith and Adams as they revisit their relationship and reflect on Chasing Amy and what that did to their careers. Smith is clearly still giddy and excited to be there, while Adams still appears to have some reservations, but neither of them hold back and is a strong supplement to the film after all these years.

10 Years Later Q and A SD (27:46) with Kevin Smith, Jason Lee, Joey Adams, Ben Affleck, Dwight Ewell, Scott Mosier and Jason Mewes. Smith and crew field questions at the Arclight in Los Angeles, in reflection of Chasing Amy like revisiting the emotional scene between Holden and Alyssa, how Adams and Smith’s relationship at the time affected filming and a host of other softball questions that allowed the cast to give playful answers. It does helps to put on the subtitles as the audio isn’t very good and some of the actors like Jason Lee and Jason Mewes don’t talk very clearly into the mics.

Overall Shock Value: A+
We can always hope for all films to have a big boost in video and audio in the jump to blu-ray but at the end of the day, you still want the films to look as originally intended and not look or sound artificial. Technically, it’s better than the 1996 Criterion Collection, and it’s got a handful of new and exclusive new material just for blu-ray. Chasing Amy is finally on blu-ray and is the biggest reason to go out and get the Kevin Smith 3-Movie Collection.

I’m not shy to say that Chasing Amy will always have a firm place in my favorite films of all time, because it’s unconventional journey with memorable performances. It’s a deep look at love, not just between significant others, but friends as well, and instead of trying to find the words to describe what a treasure Chasing Amy continues to be, I’ll just say, please watch it with an open mind if you’ve never seen it before and if you have, to see it again (preferably on blu-ray) and enjoy.

Year: 2001
Running Time: 104 minutes
Rated: R
SRP: $39.99 Single $89.99 Kevin Smith 3-Pack
Studio(s): Miramax
Release Date: November 17, 2009 (Kevin Smith 3-Pack) Original Released on Blu-Ray 2006

Film/Feature: C+
After making four unique films that stood on their own, Kevin Smith decided he had enough pull at Miramax to make the biggest inside film in American film history. To get the most out of Jay & Silent Bob Strikes Back, one had to see Clerks, Marllrats, Chasing Amy and Dogma previously, as it was originally thought to be the closing chapter on the View Askewniverse (only to be thwarted by Clerks II). Strikes Back feels like a denouement, a hybrid of a Looney Tunes cartoon, a Wayans Brothers parody film, and Pee Wee’s Big Adventure. It was as if Smith wanted to prove he could make another comedy in the vein of Mallrats, (which was picture-perfect) but let’s be honest, as rare as it was to have a film hit gold like Clerks, it was just as rare to have a film like Mallrats (eventually) find its audience as well.

I’m sure I wasn’t alone in hoping that fan-favorite View Askew characters like Banky, Brodie, Holden, Alyssa, Hooper X, Dante or Randall would get featured roles once again. Instead most of them were relegated to brief one-line cameo appearances and that alone stoked the flames of what would be an overall letdown for me.

In Dogma, Smith achieved the perfect heavy dose of the Jay and Silent Bob characters that didn’t affect the film negatively; instead they enhanced every scene they were in. In Strikes Back, however, that balance was tipped. Instead of being supporting characters Jay and Bob were THE characters, and Jason Mewes did prove he could carry an entire film; but a film anchored by Jay and Bob wasn’t nearly as interesting to me as Smith’s other characters. It took some of the bite out of the first four films that seemed to be so carefully laid out.

The flimsy premise rests on the doob-namic duo hitchhiking their way to Los Angeles to stop a Miramax-produced Bluntman and Chronic film from being made. The comic book characters based on their likeness (from Chasing Amy) has targeted them as sellouts and if they’re able to stop the film, they hope to restore their good name and squash the negativity spewed by anonymous online posters on a message board. Even that is an inside joke; a big screen sucker punch at the trolls on Smith’s own message board. Along the way, they bump into all of the View Askew alums, and then get into bizarre adventures with the Scooby Doo gang, diamond-stealing-catsuit-clad clichés (Ali Larter, Eliza Dushku, Jennifer Schwalbach, Shannon Elizabeth), a costumed villain named Cock-Knocker played by Mark Hamill, a moronic park ranger played by Will Ferrell, and a who’s who young Hollywood at the time. And I can’t forget about the monkey named Suzanne. There are no deep meanings, or some new geek-centric way of looking at life, just lots of inside dick and fart jokes.

I had always found a special place for all of Smith’s films up to that point but for the first time, I felt I was part of a small focus group who knew where most of the jokes came from. Not only had viewers need to see all four previous films, but they had to have enjoyed them as well. Strangely though, to a much younger crowd, it served as an easy entry point to Smith’s library. As long as you don’t take it too seriously, and you followed all of Smith’s works (including his comics), the film still works. Despite having too much Jay, and the wasted appearances by Joey Lauren Adams, Dwight Ewell, and Jason Lee, seeing it on blu-ray after all of these years reminded me of how funny I did find it, but I wouldn’t be honest if I didn’t say that I thought it could have been much better.

Video: B+
Strikes Back got the blu-ray treatment back in 2006 and it’s a solid 1080p AVC-encoded transfer in Clerks’ 2.35:1 original aspect ratio but I felt it could be more consistent through the entire film. In the beginning, blacks could have been deeper, contrast is not at a preferred level and as a result, it gives a slightly faded appearance. Eventually things look much better, especially in the Miramax studio finale, where colors have a good striking look. Sometimes the picture has a lot of detail and definition, while at other moments the picture takes on a softer and grainier texture. Will big Kevin Smith fans notice? They might, but it’s not going to incite some riot for higher definition either.

Audio: B+
Jay and Silent Bob Strikes Back comes correct on a 5.1 Uncompressed English PCM track which is a solid track. This is a Kevin Smith film so reign in your expectations of an audio orgasm. Strikes back is still a talky film, but there are more musical cues and notes, lots of activity on the handful of actions scenes spread throughout the film. Dialogue is all very distinct and pleasingly vulgar to the ear. We’re not listening to reference material here, folks, but it does an adequate job and reproduces one of Smith’s more lively soundtracks with justice Subtitles are available in English, English SDH, French, Spanish

Extras: D
For those that have the DVD, know that there is a lot more available that could have been ported over. If only they had waited until the box set to release Jay and Silent Bob Strikes back on blu-ray, then perhaps we could have seen the documentary, “Oh What a Lovely Tea Party” on this disc instead of the Clerks blu-ray. Which leaves us to the only extra on the disc…

Audio Commentary by Kevin Smith, Scott Mosier, and Jason Mewes is mostly Smith and Mosier with a bored Mewes lurking in the background or sleeping. Smith and Mosier are as always an excellent joy to listen to. They’re two friends and co-workers full of stories, anecdotes, and honesty that’s better than the lovey-dovey smooch-fests that can really drag a commentary track down.

Overall Shock Value: C
I’ll cringe if they somehow release this film again later on another blu-ray with all of the DVD extras ported over. Why they didn’t do that with this release, I’ll never know, but the omission of those extras certainly didn’t help the grading of this blu-ray. While I don’t recommend anyone going out of their way to get this version of this film on blu-ray, I wouldn’t hold anyone back who finds a great online deal on the box set. Technically it is shines where it needs to, but the extras are just lacking too much from the 2-disc DVD release and there’s nothing new or exclusive to the blu-ray itself. So unless you have never seen the film or don’t have any version at home, I’d pass on buying this by itself, but if you’re looking for the Kevin Smith 3-Pack upgrade, then it will suffice. As I said, the film has this infectious type of silly comedy to it, but it is story-wise an inferior film when compared to the rest of Smith’s body of work.