The Movie: Ahhh, Jay and Silent Bob have appeared with small roles in the past View Askew productions (Clerks, Chasing Amy, Mallrats, Dogma), and have now starred in their own feature film. Jay (played by Jason Mewes) and Silent Bob (played by writer/director Kevin Smith) were known to bring sexist, homophobic drug humor as comic relief to their previous films, and well, I suppose 2001 was a fine year for movies full of that sort of humor... and this movie is just packed with hilarious, irreverent humor that I feel is at least an intellectual notch or two higher than the American Pie series, with a far more interesting and entertaining plot that drove the humor instead of just having a random series of toilet humor gags, as some of the recent movies in the "toilet humor" genre have gone.

Although there are many films out there that parody other films (and there is no shortage of that going on here), Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back does a great job of parodying all of Hollywood itself, and the commercialism that drives it, all seen through the naive, but not so innocent eyes of Jay and Silent Bob.

I personally have to brand this movie as the funniest movie of 2001, but your mileage may vary. And while experience with the previous View Askew movies is not required to enjoy this film, it will help you appreciate it just that much more, as there are many subtle references to things that have happened in the previous films. If you're the type that is easily offended when things are not entirely politically correct, I would suggest you stay away from this movie, but I personally found myself literally rolling on the floor laughing, I can't see how a person could not find this movie funny.

The DVD: This is a two-disc set, and I have to be honest, I wondered how much a movie like this would really need that second disc... but I'll get on to that later. The excellent video transfer was quite clean, and though not the sharpest I've ever seen, there really wasn't anything to complain about. The audio was crisp and clean, but not much was done in the way of creating a full surround sound stage.

But the special features... oh the special features! There's so much here that I felt like I was literally drowning in extra content! For starters, there are deleted scenes (with intros by Kevin Smith, et al.) that runs damn near an hour and 30 minutes, and that's separate from the gag reel, and the "Secret Stash" which is a small collection of extended ad-libbed stuff not used in the film.

You also get a behind-the-scenes featurette, which has a lot of the same material as the deleted scenes, but also adds a few new insights into the making of the film. In addition to six different TV spots for the film, you get the two trailers previously released only on the Internet. But wait, there's more! There's the promo TV show that ran on Comedy Central, some Morris Day & The Time related stuff, two music videos, a storyboard gallery, a still photo gallery (including photos from on the set, movie posters, and comics used in the film), and cast/crew filmographies. If that's not enough for you, there's some DVD-ROM content on top of all of that.

So there's a lot. What about the quality of these features? Many of the deleted scenes were actually interesting and/or funny to watch, unlike the ones that have been included with other View Askew DVD releases. If you are a big fan of Kevin Smith and the View Askewniverse, you will definitely enjoy the second disc.