Smith strikes back with a tastelessly funny 'Zack and Miri'
With a title like "Zack and Miri Make a Porno," you know right away we're not talking about a movie you can drop the kids off to see at the mall while Christmas shopping.
The audaciously salacious "Make a Porno" comes from perpetual adolescent-oriented filmmaker Kevin Smith. It's a harder-than-hard-R-rated romantic comedy stuffed with F-words, A-words, P-words and even the L-word (love), although it takes a while to get to that last one.
In the meantime, Smith launches a barrage of raunchy sex jokes (verbal and visual), eye-blanching couplings and shocking sight gags geared toward the college crowd demographic. Even though naked bodies make numerous appearances, they don't include those of the two main stars.
When it comes to the gelatinous Seth Rogen, that might not be such a bad thing. For male moviegoers who just saw his salubrious, spunky co-star Elizabeth Banks as First Lady Laura Bush in Oliver Stone's "W.," that could be a severe disappointment.
Rogen and Banks share a sparkling chemistry as Zack and Miri, and that quality goes a long way toward propping up their movie in the third act when Smith proves that sentiment can indeed be the mortal enemy of comedy.
Zack and Miri have been good friends since first grade. As their 10th high school class reunion looms, the two have been sharing a cold apartment with no water, heat or power, the result of not having money to pay the bills.
After meeting a gay porn star (Justin Long) at their reunion, Zack experiences an epiphany: They can make and sell their own porn film and pay the bills.
"It would be weird and wrong," Miri says.
"Other people have options," Zack replies, "and dignity!"
Desperate, the two assemble a team of fly-by-night filmmakers, among them Zack's coffee shop work mate Delaney (Craig Robinson), a born porn star named Lester (Jason Mewes), an adult entertainer named Bubbles (ex-porn actress Traci Lords) and a blonde named Stacey (current porn star Katie Morgan).
Lords, who became a porn legend in the 1980s when authorities discovered she made zillions of sex films while underage, gets less to do here than when she appeared in the TV sitcom "Roseanne." Morgan actually demonstrates a real flair for romantic comedy.
It would have been timely had Smith used Zack and Miri's predicament as a metaphor for the middle class' financial struggles in the wake of the U.S. economic crisis and shown the lengths to which some Americans have gone.
He offers no political spin on this premise, which worked far better in the 2003 release "Love Actually" when two movie sex-scene stand-ins (Martin Freeman and Joanna Page) illustrate that sexual encounters are merely mechanical acts without the commitment of love.
In "Make a Porno," Zack and Miri agree to have sex in front of a camera for strictly financial gain, but, of course, their coupling instantly triggers something deeper and more profound in their long-term relationship.
This is where the blessing and curse of Kevin Smith emerges. Apparently, he can't write truly adult characters, so at the pivotal point when Zack and Miri are supposed to evolve out of their arrested adolescences, we can't really tell they have.
No matter, Smith slathers on the gross-outs, gross-ins and various randy acts of sex so blunt and shocking, they evoke rounds of hearty, surprised laughs in his target audience.
Even though appealing to our baser instincts works well for Smith, his attempts to transition into something sweet and romantically wholesome feel forced and phony.
Judd Apatow he ain't.
"Zack and Miri Make a Porno"
Rating: 3 stars
Starring: Seth Rogen, Elizabeth Banks, Jason Mewes, Tom Savini
Directed by: Kevin Smith
Other: A Weinstein Company release. Rated R for language, nudity, sexual situations. 101 minutes
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