Sex still more offensive than violence Zack and Miri Make A Porno' Review...
Posted on October 31, 2008 - 11:37pm by michael
If Kevin Smith can't do anything new with the romantic comedy genre I think it's pretty safe to assume that it's never going to happen. The first 45 minutes or so of
Zack and Miri Make A Porno have some of the funniest stuff I've seen in a movie since
Pineapple Express (which was written by fellow funnyman Judd Apatow). The scene where Zack is talking to the two gay guys at the high school reunion cost me a perfectly good cup of delicious iced coffee, most of which ended up in my lap and sprayed all over my coffee table. I think I rewound that scene and watched it over again about 15 times before I finally heard everything over my laughing.
But there definitely comes a point in the movie where the predictability factor shoots through the roof and, despite Kevin Smith's undeniably outstanding writing skills, the movie takes a serious downturn.
I am not as huge of a fan of Kevin Smith as some of my friends. One of my best friends grew up in New Jersey right next to where
Clerks was filmed and has thus developed kind of a special relationship with Smith's films, but while I enjoyed
Clerks and loved
Mallrats and was mildly impressed with
Chasing Amy (except for all the screaming), I haven't been very interested in anything Smith has done since then. I was outwardly bored with
Dogma,
Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back seemed like such a cash-in to me, I still haven't gotten around to seeing
Clerks II and I'll probably never watch
Jersey Girl. Ben Affleck and Jennifer Lopez are in that thing, for God's sake.
[caption id="attachment_24914" align="alignleft" width="300" caption="What if this guy got you pregnant?"]
[/caption]
But for a good portion of
Zack and Miri I thought that I had been missing something all along, or at least that I had forgotten the undeniable charm of Smith's work. It's true that he is a brilliant writer. He can create conversations that have a hugely profane but still realistic flow, and with actors like Seth Rogen and Elizabeth Banks (and a whole list of others) nailing all of their lines, it makes for something special in the comedy department. Sadly, the movie is so predictable that I almost feel like I should give you a spoiler warning just to tell you that.
Zack and Miri are life-long friends who have a relationship of convenience. They enjoy each other's company and have a real friendship, but they are roommates primarily for financial reasons. They both have dead-end jobs and rely on each other to share the rent and bills, but a variety of factors (mostly Zack's inability to put their utility bills above a "Fleshlight" on his list of priorities) they eventually find themselves months behind on their bills and unable to pay their rent.
[caption id="attachment_24915" align="alignright" width="300" caption="Jason Long, who I still haven't forgiven for the relentlessly stupid Jeepers Creepers movies, gives one of the funniest performances in the movie."]
[/caption]
One day Miri accidentally allows herself to be filmed by a couple of teenagers while she's changing clothes in plain sight at the coffee shop where Zack works and the video shows up on the internet with hundreds of thousands of people watching it daily. Not a bad turnout for what is really a pretty thoroughly uninteresting video, but no matter. This gives Zack the idea that they should make a porno. Even if only the 800 or so people from their high school graduating class bought a copy for $20 a pop or so, it would instantly solve all of their financial problems.
It's interesting to notice that Zack and Miri suffer through more moral and emotional torment trying to accept the idea of having sex with each other than they do about selling their naked images to the porn industry. I would have thought that crossing the line into making porn movies would be a pretty big step, but not these two. You see, it seems that Miri's parents are dead and Zack grandparents are dead (?), so they have no one to be disappointed in them. It is, however, one of the film's clever accusations of the public at large that the only reason that everyone doesn't get involved in making porn is because they're worried about what their parents would think.
[caption id="attachment_24916" align="alignleft" width="300" caption="The cast and crew and cast of Zack and Miri Make A Porno."]
[/caption]
They amass a makeshift crew made up of Lester the Molester (Jason Mewes), a stripper named Stacey (real life porn star Katie Morgan), an aging stripper named Bubbles (Traci Lords) who earns her name with a rather disturbing trick that she does at bachelor parties, and Barry, a black man named Delaney (Craig Robinson) with a brutal marriage to a black caricature of a wife and more than his share of financial problems himself. Jeff Anderson also pops up occasionally.
The first half of the movie is some of the best work that Smith has done in years. The dialogue is hilarious, none of the film's admittedly extensive profanity seems overdone, and even the characters are believable as they make this completely unbelievable plan. I spent most of the first half of the movie trying to figure out what was going to go wrong and prevent the porno from ever being filmed, but I spent the second half watching the movie slog through a sadly lengthy list of romantic comedy clichs as it labored toward the obligatory Hollywood ending.
[caption id="attachment_24917" align="alignright" width="300" caption="As was to be expected, the awkwardness angle is tapped like an empty beer keg in Zack and Miri's scene..."]
[/caption]
I understand that the word "porno" has generated some controversy, prompting some newspapers to refuse to print ads for the movie and some theaters to refuse to show it. I'm wondering if Kevin Smith predicted this and if it was part of his decision to use this title, since getting his film banned from select theaters and newspapers is probably the quickest and most efficient way to ensure it's success. At any rate, it is another sad, sad sign of the times when the word "porno" will generate frantic animosity, but no one has a problem with blood-soaked, degenerate films like
Hostel and the never-ending
Saw films from being shipped to theaters. Go figure.
The comedy in
Zack and Miri Make A Porno is definitely successful, particularly for the first half of the movie, but the romance doesn't work as well. I'm not sure why Smith would so heavily cater to a mainstream audience with the overall arc of his film quite this much, but the pandering doesn't quite ruin the hilarity that preceded it, so at least there's that. If the comedic tone of the first half had made it all the way to the end we would have a comedy classic, but this is still one of the better comedies to come along recently.
The Bean Meter
[caption id="attachment_24918" align="aligncenter" width="258" caption="3.5 Beans out of 5."]
[/caption]
If Kevin Smith can't do anything new with the romantic comedy genre I think it's pretty safe to assume that it's never going to happen. The first 45 minutes or so of Zack and Miri Make A Porno have some of the funniest stuff I've seen in a movie since Pineapple Express (which was written by fellow funnyman Judd Apatow). The scene where Zack is talking to the two gay guys at the high school reunion cost me a perfectly good cup of delicious iced coffee, most of which ended up in my lap and sprayed all over my coffee table. I think I rewound that scene and watched it over again about 15 times before I finally heard everything over my laughing.
But there definitely comes a point in the movie where the predictability factor shoots through the roof and, despite Kevin Smith's undeniably outstanding writing skills, the movie takes a serious downturn.
I am not as huge of a fan of Kevin Smith as some of my friends. One of my best friends grew up in New Jersey right next to where Clerks was filmed and has thus developed kind of a special relationship with Smith's films, but while I enjoyed Clerks and loved Mallrats and was mildly impressed with Chasing Amy (except for all the screaming), I haven't been very interested in anything Smith has done since then. I was outwardly bored with Dogma, Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back seemed like such a cash-in to me, I still haven't gotten around to seeing Clerks II and I'll probably never watch Jersey Girl. Ben Affleck and Jennifer Lopez are in that thing, for God's sake.
[caption id="attachment_24914" align="alignleft" width="300" caption="What if this guy got you pregnant?"]
[/caption]
But for a good portion of Zack and Miri I thought that I had been missing something all along, or at least that I had forgotten the undeniable charm of Smith's work. It's true that he is a brilliant writer. He can create conversations that have a hugely profane but still realistic flow, and with actors like Seth Rogen and Elizabeth Banks (and a whole list of others) nailing all of their lines, it makes for something special in the comedy department. Sadly, the movie is so predictable that I almost feel like I should give you a spoiler warning just to tell you that.
Zack and Miri are life-long friends who have a relationship of convenience. They enjoy each other's company and have a real friendship, but they are roommates primarily for financial reasons. They both have dead-end jobs and rely on each other to share the rent and bills, but a variety of factors (mostly Zack's inability to put their utility bills above a "Fleshlight" on his list of priorities) they eventually find themselves months behind on their bills and unable to pay their rent.
[caption id="attachment_24915" align="alignright" width="300" caption="Jason Long, who I still haven't forgiven for the relentlessly stupid Jeepers Creepers movies, gives one of the funniest performances in the movie."]
[/caption]
One day Miri accidentally allows herself to be filmed by a couple of teenagers while she's changing clothes in plain sight at the coffee shop where Zack works and the video shows up on the internet with hundreds of thousands of people watching it daily. Not a bad turnout for what is really a pretty thoroughly uninteresting video, but no matter. This gives Zack the idea that they should make a porno. Even if only the 800 or so people from their high school graduating class bought a copy for $20 a pop or so, it would instantly solve all of their financial problems.
It's interesting to notice that Zack and Miri suffer through more moral and emotional torment trying to accept the idea of having sex with each other than they do about selling their naked images to the porn industry. I would have thought that crossing the line into making porn movies would be a pretty big step, but not these two. You see, it seems that Miri's parents are dead and Zack grandparents are dead (?), so they have no one to be disappointed in them. It is, however, one of the film's clever accusations of the public at large that the only reason that everyone doesn't get involved in making porn is because they're worried about what their parents would think.
[caption id="attachment_24916" align="alignleft" width="300" caption="The cast and crew and cast of Zack and Miri Make A Porno."]
[/caption]
They amass a makeshift crew made up of Lester the Molester (Jason Mewes), a stripper named Stacey (real life porn star Katie Morgan), an aging stripper named Bubbles (Traci Lords) who earns her name with a rather disturbing trick that she does at bachelor parties, and Barry, a black man named Delaney (Craig Robinson) with a brutal marriage to a black caricature of a wife and more than his share of financial problems himself. Jeff Anderson also pops up occasionally.
The first half of the movie is some of the best work that Smith has done in years. The dialogue is hilarious, none of the film's admittedly extensive profanity seems overdone, and even the characters are believable as they make this completely unbelievable plan. I spent most of the first half of the movie trying to figure out what was going to go wrong and prevent the porno from ever being filmed, but I spent the second half watching the movie slog through a sadly lengthy list of romantic comedy clichs as it labored toward the obligatory Hollywood ending.
[caption id="attachment_24917" align="alignright" width="300" caption="As was to be expected, the awkwardness angle is tapped like an empty beer keg in Zack and Miri's scene..."]
[/caption]
I understand that the word "porno" has generated some controversy, prompting some newspapers to refuse to print ads for the movie and some theaters to refuse to show it. I'm wondering if Kevin Smith predicted this and if it was part of his decision to use this title, since getting his film banned from select theaters and newspapers is probably the quickest and most efficient way to ensure it's success. At any rate, it is another sad, sad sign of the times when the word "porno" will generate frantic animosity, but no one has a problem with blood-soaked, degenerate films like Hostel and the never-ending Saw films from being shipped to theaters. Go figure.
The comedy in Zack and Miri Make A Porno is definitely successful, particularly for the first half of the movie, but the romance doesn't work as well. I'm not sure why Smith would so heavily cater to a mainstream audience with the overall arc of his film quite this much, but the pandering doesn't quite ruin the hilarity that preceded it, so at least there's that. If the comedic tone of the first half had made it all the way to the end we would have a comedy classic, but this is still one of the better comedies to come along recently.
The Bean Meter
[caption id="attachment_24918" align="aligncenter" width="258" caption="3.5 Beans out of 5."]
