Zack and Miri Make a Porno (*1/2)

ZACK AND MIRI MAKE A PORNO
Written and Directed by Kevin Smith



*1/2

Kevin Smith is a genius when it comes to writing smart, irreverent, and most of all hilarious dialogue. His films Dogma, Chasing Amy, and Clerks are brilliant exercises in the extremity of what "dirty words" are. Not only that, but he's also somebody who has challenged taboo themes, such as religion in Dogma and homosexual confusion in Chasing Amy. The weight of his material has never been said to be too heavy, but when you look at his latest film, Zack and Miri Make a Porno, it is so light that it gets picked up by the wind and is blown away quickly after it starts.

The story follows Zack (Seth Rogen) and Miri (Elizabeth Banks), who are best friends and roommates. They've known each other since the first grade, and have never crossed the romance barrier with each other, because that would just make everything weird between them, wouldn't it? Miri has a job (but it is never seen or mentioned), but that along with Zack's measley salary at his coffee shop is not enough to keep the electricity on. After the embarassment of realizing their own mediocrity at their 10-year high school reunion, along with their dire financial straits, they decide that the thing to do is to shoot a porno.

Neither of them lose their jobs, but useless expenses have put them in this comprimising situation, so they decide to put a crew together for their super low-budget dirty movie. They recruit Zack's co-worker Delaney (Craig Robinson) to be the producer, despite having no idea what the job requires. For actors, they get Lester (Smith regular Jason Mewes) to be the meaty male cast member, Stacey (Katie Morgan) to be the bubbly blonde, and the aptly-named Bubbles (Traci Lords) to be the mature, dominant woman character. Along with them, Zack and Miri themselves decide that they will hook up on screen as well.

They go to work, making the film with mics tied to hockey sticks and using the coffee shop as the shooting location. Production is going along swimmingly, until the dreaded Zack-Miri sex scene, where the two friends are brought face-to-face with their brewing sexual tension. The surprisingly tame sex scene is followed by a sloven third act that is both unfunny, as well as sappy. The film dwindles almost immediately from the beginning, and by the time we've reached the stretching end, it has completely bottomed-out on its sense of humor.

Kevin Smith is a filmmaker that has been dear to my heart, because I think he has a way to present deviant language and behavior in a very funny and appealing way. That being said, as a writer, he has always had one major weakness: the outside perception of his films--that are usually brazen with obscene and liberal images--are usually just coating for stories that can't withhold its own conservative sentimentality. Even in his best film, Chasing Amy, the cleverness spills over into melodrama, and nearly sabotages the film's entire structure. The same can be said for Zack and Miri, except that it is like that the entire time.

On top of that, Smith has never been a sharp director. His idea of visual comprehension is that of static shots and awkward angles. His focus is on dialogue, fair enough, but even Woody Allen knows how to make conservative camerawork look progressive. Smith has never shied away from his ineptitude behind the camera, but it's his paranoia that someone may harm his words that keeps him back there. What we're left with is a visual eye-sore which would be fine and dandy if the film's story and dialogue were enough to distract us, but instead it just helps to magnify all of the mistakes within its sparse 101 minutes.

The cast is a mish-mash of Kevin Smith regulars (Mewes and Jeff Anderson), former porn stars (Lords and Morgan), and a new crop of unfamiliar talent (Robertson, Rogen, Banks). One of the few bright spots within the movie is a cameo from Justin Long, who plays Brandon, someone who meets up with Zack at the reunion, and discloses his employment as a gay porn star. His confession helps influence Zack and Miri's decisions later in the film, but nothing else is as funny as his sparse screen time.

I will not say that there weren't parts where I did laugh, but they were few and far between. Like another unfunny comedy this year, Step Brothers, there is a lack of actual jokes. The movie depends on gross-out sight gags, where the level of humor reaches the lowest common denominator. I'd been tipped off that Zack and Miri was truly a warm romance, but I didn't expect the film to veer so close to overemotional scenes that are so far out compared to the rest of the movie's content. This film is not Kevin Smith's best day, and out of all his films, this is probably his least satisfying.