The final film in Kevin Smith's "Viewaskewniverse" series, Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back, is a ninety minute inside joke, a movie in which Smith is playing around with his characters before he puts them away for good. It's fun as hell, but if you haven't seen the films in his "New Jersey trilogy" (Clerks, Mallrats and Chasing Amy) this movie will be almost entirely lost on you.

The plot, such as it is, involves Jay and Silent Bob discovering that there's a movie being made about them. Well, about Bluntman and Chronic, the comic book characters based on them. They also discover a thing called the internet, which for them is a message board where posters are trashing their good names. They vow to stop the movie from being made and thus, stop the people who are calling them "ball lickers" online.

The first and last half hours of the movie are by far the best. They've got cameos on top of cameos, most of which are way too good to spoil. Just keep your eyes open. (I didn't recognize Marc Blucas, and I barely caught onto Judd Nelson.) I was paying attention, and I'm sure I didn't catch all of the references.

Smith's logic works, but is dizzying to follow. For instance, Brodie and Banky (played by Jason Lee in Mallrats and Chasing Amy, respectively) both exist, and Mallrats is a real movie, but Chasing Amy is not, and Lee appears as both characters in this film. Ben Affleck plays both himself and Amy's Holden McNeil, who talks about Ben Affleck, but Shannon (Affleck's Mallrats incarnation) is nowhere to be seen. And Shannon Elizabeth is both an actor in the film (playing Jay's love interest) and talked about by Jay, when he asks Jason Biggs (playing himself) if he ever felt her up when they were shooting American Pie. Confused yet?

There are a lot of really great moments, and actors (especially Affleck) who are great sports about poking fun at themselves. I loved the banter between Biggs ("I'm the pie fucker!") and James Van Der Beek ("You wouldn't last a day on the Creek!"), and the visit to the set of Good Will Hunting 2. As a Chasing Amy fan, I loved having the movie's most burning question, "Is Banky gay?" finally addressed. I loved being in on the joke, and if you're a Smith fan, you will be too.

As a movie? Well, that's where Jay and Silent Bob has a few problems.

The middle sags hopelessly, involving a bit about a jewel heist (the punchline to that is just sad) and a monkey. Okay, for me personally? Monkey humor is not funny. No, not ever. You know when the monkey blows a raspberry and that's supposed to be funny? Or someone says something and the monkey flashes a big on-cue monkey smile? That's not ever funny. In fact, it's painfully unfunny. And there's a monkey in the middle of this movie, and its supposed to be funny, and that's all I'm going to say about that.

Smith and Jason Mewes acquit themselves just fine. Smith, playing Silent Bob, doesn't write himself very many lines, and works around his status as a non-actor that way. Mewes is basically just a friend of Smith's playing a teenaged version of himself, and he's never been a particularly good actor. Here, he's competent and charming, and it was more than I was expecting. Fortunately, Smith piles on enough extra characters that it's never really an issue.

So that's the verdict. Kevin Smith fans, hurry to the theater (and if you have to pee, do it before Jay and Silent Bob get to Hollywood, or you'll be sorry). Non-Smith fans, give it a pass. Wait and see what Smith comes up with next, now that he's officially put away his toys and become a grownup.