Jason Mewes has played one man, Jay, in Kevin Smith's films since 1994, and the joke is that Jay never stops talking. In small doses he is funny. Asked to keep it up for two hours, he wears thin, and the films notice less often than they should.
Fi1m perspective
Jason Mewes's Jay arrives talking and leaves talking. He is a drug dealer with nowhere to be, a fast, foul-mouthed monologue with legs, and beside him stands Silent Bob, played by Kevin Smith, who says nothing and so makes everything Jay says sound louder. The material is crude, the delivery is manic, and Mewes's gift is timing: he knows where the next obscenity falls and he lands on it. The character was not so much written as observed. "When we did Clerks I was 18/19 – that's how I used to act, exactly," Mewes has said, and we see no reason to doubt him.
He had no acting training when Smith cast him in Clerks (1994); he had been working as a roofer. The part was small, small enough that our review of the film, which we rate highly, did not find room to mention him. Jay came back in Mallrats (1995), Chasing Amy (1997) and Dogma (1999), and by Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back (2001) the duo had a film to themselves. Smith kept returning to him: Clerks II (2006), Jay and Silent Bob Reboot (2019), Clerks III (2022). The act has run, on and off, for twenty-eight years.
The trouble with a character who is all engine is that he has one gear. In Dogma Jay is, we wrote, funny for twenty minutes and present for 130, and we stand by the arithmetic: his first burst of filth made us laugh out loud, and somewhere around the film's third theological halt we realised we were waiting for him to finish rather than listening. That is not entirely Mewes's fault. Smith writes Jay as relief from the talk and then gives him talk of his own, and Mewes, who has never been asked to do anything else in those films, does Jay. The complaint that he has been typecast is fair. It is also a little beside the point, since the type is his and nobody else could be cast in it.
He has stepped out of it occasionally. He plays Lester rather than Jay in Zack and Miri Make a Porno (2008), and in 2019 he directed his first film, Madness in the Method, in which he also acts. We have not reviewed either and will not pretend to a verdict. What we can say is that every few years Smith writes another scene in which a silent man stands still and a loud one does not, and Mewes turns up and does it well. If you liked him for twenty minutes in 1994, you will like him for twenty minutes now. The films are longer than that.
Biography
Jason Mewes is an American actor and comedian. He is best known for portraying Jay, one half of the duo Jay and Silent Bob, in Kevin Smith’s View Askewniverse films.
Mewes made his screen debut as Jay in Clerks (1994). He has since reprised the role in Mallrats (1995), Chasing Amy (1997), Dogma (1999), Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back (2001), Clerks II (2006) and Clerks III (2022). He has also appeared in Scream 3 (2000) and Zack and Miri Make a Porno (2008), and in television series including The Flash (2014) and Hawaii Five-0 (2010).
Born in Highlands, New Jersey, Mewes began his career while working as a roofer. He has collaborated frequently with Smith since the mid-1990s.
