Review :: Zack and Miri Make a Porno

What would happen if Boogie Nights knocked up American Pie? I don't know, but it would probably look a little bit like this:

Zack and Miri Make a Porno is Kevin Smith's latest film, following hot on the heels of the under-rated and savagely funny Clerks 2. Platonic roommates and best friends Zack (the very quickly going to wear out his welcome Seth Rogan) and Miri (Elizabeth Banks) are losers. Ahem, I mean slackers. They are both working dead-end jobs and are losing money fast. When their power and water get unexpectedly turned off (unexpected inasmuch as they didn't pay their bills), things begin to look bleak until Zack, brilliant mind that he is, stumbles upon the idea of making a porno together. So, rounding up some View Askew alumni (Jason Mewes and Jeff Anderson), they set out to make a few bucks - the dirty way. What they don't plan for, however, is their personal feelings getting in the way, as they always do in this situations, and they soon find themselves living every "sex is complicated" cliche that romantic comedies have been recycling for the past, oh I don't know... forever.

Now, let's get one thing out and in the open here: I've been a Kevin Smith fan for a while. Not a fanboy, mind you... just a fan. His particular blend of genuine heart, crass humour, and his normally sharp eye for interpersonal maneuvers and dynamics, a blend that was brilliantly delivered in such films as Chasing Amy and Clerks 2, has always appealed to me, even if some of his more over-the-top digressions into vulgarity have left me shaking my head. Zack and Miri, however, just feels empty, like an uninspired retread of material and themes he has developed (and developed much better) in other films. It feels more like we are watching a masturbatory fantasy play out than like a genuine cinematic experience. And that's a problem. It all comes across as adolescent, like school-boys giggling over strong language and naughty pictures. It's hard, in fact, to see much of the Chasing Amy Kevin Smith in here. Example:

(During interviews for the their porno)
Zack: What's your name?
Lester: Lester... Lester the Molester Cockenschtuff
Zack: Wow. That's a great porn name.
Lester: I get to pick a porn name? Then I want to be called... Pete Jones.

In Chasing Amy, the characters talked about dick and fart jokes in a very self-aware, very meta-fiction sort of way; in Zack and Miri, we just get American Pie-style dick and fart jokes with little-to-no awareness or tongue-in-cheek irony. But these aren't just American Pie-style jokes, oh no: they are the straight-to-video American Pie-style jokes, the kind which rely only on out-grossing the already gross. Take the above dialogue. That's a dumb joke. And that's about as clever, or as clean, as any of the jokes get here. Smith seems to think that simply ramping up the explicit and naughty nature of the story will make it funnier and more endearing. It doesn't. In fact, the two moments in the film that I think Smith thought would be the most hilarious and outrageous just feel disingenuous and soulless and very, very pre-pubescent.

(Uh, beware: this is the red band trailer, so it does have naughty language in it. But it gives you an idea of what the film is like.)


So the whole thing is disappointing. I like Kevin Smith. But it seems that for every Dogma or Clerks 2 that we get we also get a Mallrats or Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back.

Experto Crede: while it's not as bad as the Apatow school of comedy, it just doesn't live up to what I know Smith can do.