Filmmaker Kevin Smith has always had a talent for combining the profane with pop culture. When you consider this, it's probably not surprising in the least he would do a movie called Zack and Miri Make a Porno. What was surprising to me is how disappointing the end result turns out to be. Though far from terrible, the movie seems to view sex and sometimes even love the same way a 10-year-old boy views a stash of Playboy magazines he finds hidden under his older brother's bed. Despite the provocative title, the movie isn't really about sex, or even about making a porno. Strip away all the dirty talk and controversy, and you're left with a perfectly standard idiot plot romantic comedy about two people who are a little too bland to be likable.

Zack (Seth Rogen) and Miri (Elizabeth Banks) have been best friends since the first grade, and now are roommates together in a run down apartment. They're behind on the bills, and Zack's job at the coffee shop isn't pulling in enough money to pay the rent and utilities. (Miri supposedly has a job also, but it's never shown, nor do I remember if it was even mentioned.) Maybe that's because the pair spend a lot of their money foolishly on sex toys they find on line. In typical Kevin Smith fashion, the two are very open and frank about their sex lives and talk about it in great detail in public, not seeming to care who might be listening. I usually find Smith's dialogue very smart, but here, it seems a bit forced. Some of the stuff Zack talks about within earshot of customers at the coffee shop would have him fired on his first day, but supposedly he's been there for a while now. The best example of Smith's trademark dialogue in this film is when Zack encounters a gay couple (played by Justin Long and Brandon Routh) at his 10-year high school reunion early in the film. Long is particularly hilarious in this scene, and I started to wish the camera had followed that couple out of the building instead of Zack and Miri.

Back to the plot: Zack and Miri are so behind on their rent that they have their power and water utilities shut off. Desperate times call for desperate measures, and Zack quickly comes up with the idea that they could make a porno sex tape and sell it. Zack obviously is a little behind on the times, and doesn't realize that people get their porn on line these days, but no matter. They gather up a few of their friends to help them make it including Zack's co-worker Delaney (Craig Robinson) who funds the movie and cameraman Deacon (Jeff Anderson), and a cast that includes some locals like Lester (Kevin Smith regular, Jason Mewes), a bachelor party performer named Bubbles (real life adult film star Traci Lords), and Stacy (Katie Morgan, who in real life has nearly 200 adult films to her credit). Their initial idea is to shoot a porno parody of Star Wars called Star Whores, but when this falls through, the group decides to shoot their film right in the coffee shop after hours. This somewhat reminded me of Kevin Smith's breakthrough film, Clerks, which was shot after hours at the convenience store where he was working at the time.

Zack and Miri Make a Porno seems to want to ask the question what good is sex without love? It's painfully obvious to the audience that the title roommates and friends have feelings for each other, and have had them for a long time. But they don't seem to realize it until they have to shoot a sex scene together for their movie, which winds up being a lot more awkward and eventually passionate than one would usually find in a porno. Even after that, they still deny their feelings for each other, and go through cliched and manipulative misunderstandings that could easily be solved with a few little words, which they of course never say. We're supposed to be on the edge of our seats as to wether or not Zack and Miri will say those little words and admit they love each other, but I found that I could care less. They were not interesting people to me. With his scruffy beard and bushy hair, Seth Rogen kind of looks like a foul mouthed teddy bear here. He lays on the "aw shucks, I'm just a big ol' lug" charm, but it didn't work on me. I'm still not convinced that Rogen has what it takes to be a leading man, despite the fact he's had three leading roles now. As for Elizabeth Bank's Miri, she never quite develops as a real character. She mainly only reacts to what's currently going on, or to what Zack is currently talking about. She gets a couple good lines here and there, but never quite comes into her own.

What disappointed me the most about the film is the awkward transition from the raunchy and crude sex humor, to the sweet and cliched romantic comedy material. It wasn't convincing to me, because I didn't care enough about the characters. One recent comedy that was able to handle the transition between crude to sweet was Sex Drive (a movie nobody saw), where the romantic characters were written sensitively and seemed to have genuine emotions behind them. Zack and Miri are the direct creation of the sitcom idiot plot, where they're in love simply because they've known each other most of their lives. We don't get to know enough about them to want to see them get together. The outcome seems pre-packaged. Likewise, the movie never devotes enough time to the other people involved with the film project. They're just a group of oddballs brought together to say a couple one-liners and shoot a few sex scenes. The movie seems to be implying that the group have all become great friends by the end of the movie (the cast and crew pitch in to help pay off Zack and Miri's debt), but we the audience never really get to see this happen. It's all false sentimentality through and through.

Those of you hoping for some arousing pleasure out of the porn scenes will be disappointed. The promising and satirical Star Whores idea gets written out fairly quickly, and they never do get to finish the movie they were making at the coffee shop. Despite its title, Zack and Miri Make a Porno is a surprisingly bland and non-threatening string of romantic comedy cliches covered up with adult film flair. That's not to say there aren't any laughs to be had, but they are scattered. I expected more from this movie, and from Kevin Smith. After all, this is a guy who put a "Donkey Show" in his last movie, Clerks II. If you never saw that movie, or don't know what a Donkey Show is, look it up.

See the movie times in your area or buy the DVD at Amazon.com!

1 comments