Jay And Silent Bob Strike Back

This is either an inspired satire on the state of popular cinema, an ego-trip of mammoth proportions or a bucketful of vomit.

Kevin Smith hit film fest aficionados on their funny bones with his $27,000 debut, Clerks, which centred around a crummy convenience store in New Jersey. His third film, Chasing Amy, which starred an unknown Ben Affleck and Smith's girlfriend at the time, Joey Lauren Adams, is probably his best. It's about a shy comic book writer who falls in love with a lesbian.

Jay (Jason Mewes) and Silent Bob (Smith) are characters that have appeared in all his movies. Jay is a lanky long haired moron who thinks about sex every 14 seconds and Silent Bob is a big bearded guy who doesn't speak. They hang out at the convenience store, or in the diner, annoying everyone. Jay's attitude towards women is particularly insulting. He calls them bitches and wants only one thing from them. Actually two, but not at the same time.

Now they are the leading men in a film that should be buried deeper than atomic waste. On a journey to Hollywood to try and stop a movie being made of the cartoon characters invented in Chasing Amy, they hitch a ride with four babes, who call themselves animal activists, but are jewel thieves. What happens next is a pick'n'mix pastiche of Entrapment, Charlie's Angels and Road Trip.

Smith has persuaded everyone who has ever worked for him to come down and be silly, Jay-style. Hey, there's Ben and Matt on the set of Good Will Hunting 2. The slackers from Clerks are still in the store and Chris Rock does a hideously unfunny cameo as a black director, who treats his assistants like, er, slaves. Alanis Morissette, who played God in Dogma, is somewhere in the crowd and Mark Hamill, the once handsome Luke Skywalker, humiliates himself as a cartoon not-quite-superhero. Real people play themselves, which allows Jason Biggs to talk about humping a pudding in American Pie.

Laugh? You'll die.