Zack and Miri Make a Porno (2008) dir. Kevin Smith
Starring: Seth Rogan, Elizabeth Banks, Craig Robinson, Jason Mewes, Traci Lords
***
After an almost 10 year drought of disappointing films Kevin Smith has delivered one of his best – a raunchy romantic comedy, mixing traditional genre expectations without completely abandoning that naughty immature crassness which has made him distinct.
The set-up is screenwriting 101. Zack and Miri are roommates, platonic best friends who are having trouble paying the rent. They both work as lowly baristas at a Starbucks-like coffee shop. When their water is shut off, it’s time to put their heads together and make some more money. The idea of making a porn film emerges when they discover a short peeping cell-phone video of Miri undressing becomes a youtube sensation.
With an ironic nod to those Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland musicals – when times are down, ‘let’s put on a show!’ – the duo recruits friends for the crew, host casting auditions and all the pre-production needed to get their project off the ground. They know nothing about making films, but they know porn, and so their production skills are learned while doing, with elbow grease and common sense – like a sweded porno film. A love story emerges between the pair as they eventually have to actually have sex together – an act they’ve purposely avoided to preserve their friendship. Will their movie unite them or break them apart?
Seth Rogan is a natural addition to the Kevin Smith team. His everyman affability and self-depreciating comic style is the ideal alter-ego for Smith. Elizabeth Banks has the ideal girl-next-door hotness to make it believable that someone that goodlooking would have no career and be unattached to anyone at her age. Their romantic arc hits all the right beats at the right times. We know where it’s all going to go, but the actors play their characters with such honesty we forget about the formula.
Though it trumps all the Jay and Silent Bob stuff he’s done over the past 10 years, it’s still a Kevin Smith film. Smith goes back for even more Star Wars humour, with a lengthy “Star Wars” porn spoof sequence featuring great names like Darth Vibrator, Hung Solo and Princess Lay-her. A weathered-looked Jason Mewes is prominent, as Zack's best friend, and porn-star in waiting. Even his original Clerks protag Jeff Anderson is one of the bunch.
Smith’s visual sensibilities are as flat and two-dimensional as ever - In many ways Zack and Miri weren’t meant for Judd Apatow slickness. The film’s naughty nature and amateurish dalliances add to Smith’s still intact indie-cred.
"Zack and Miri Make a Porno" is available on Blu-Ray and DVD in Canada from Alliance Films
1 comment :
I really felt this was like Kevin Smith doing his best Judd Apatow style movie.
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