Silent Bob Speaks is a collection of essays and articles published by Kevin Smith, the Director of films such as Clerks, Chasing Amy, Mallrats and Dogma, that were previously featured in the magazinhe Athena and on a website he contributed to. These essays both take an irrevelant look at things that have annoyed or continue to annoy him in his everyday life and offer a behind-the-scenes peek at events surrounding the filming of movies Jay And Silent Bob Strike Back and Jersey Girl.

At first, this book is mildly funny; Kevin rants and raves about all things random as well as breaking into critical dissections of "Greasy" Reese Witherspoon and schoolgirl fantasy and wanna-be diva, Brittany Spears. He looks at some of the casting auditions that preceeded Jay And Silent Bob Strike Back and gives the reader a brief insight into the movie business. But at about the half-way book, the essays become just repetitions of what has gone before, start to get very samey and lose some of the initial bite that was present in the first few chapters. I guess it doesn't exactly help that these essays were never originally written with the mind of putting them together in a book so don't always flow as well they might if they were proper chapters!

Around the time that Smith begins gushing about friend and fellow co-star Ben Affleck, I began to really give up any hope of redemption! A later chapter does a likewise job on Tom Cruise whom I have never paticulary liked much and which did nothing to enamour me to him either!

The whole thing just starts to get a bit stale and what could have been a mildly amusing read throughout instead starts well before tapering off to a very damp squib! By the end, I was not sure if these were really Smith's opinions or whether or not he was blindly trying to satirise himself. Unfortunately I found myself beginning to lean towards the former premise!!

Smith makes much more sense as Silent Bob than he ever seems to do in real-life and Clerks remains a minor indie masterpiece of cinema ingeniously filmed on a shoestring. But this is a book that will only serve to turn you very firmly off Kevin Smith and does him no good whatsoever! I guess what I am saying is that this is one to avoid!! Even if you previously thought you quite liked him, this book of collected thoughts will turn all that around. It comes over by the end as petty and juvenile and there is very little here to recommend!