Zack and Miri Make A Porno (The Weinstein Company)
They Make Soft Porn
Zack and Miri Make A Porno is a movie that aspires to be dirty. The language is filthy, the plot is trashy, and the visual aids are crappy. So this is a movie that lives up to its aspirations. It is soft porn to be sure, but it stretches the limits of what has been seen on screen in a major motion picture.
Zack (Seth Rogen) and Miri (Elizabeth Banks) are roommates of the non-sexual type. They have known each other since forever and are each others best friend. They also are down on their luck and things are getting pretty desperate. So in true Mickey and Judy fashion they decide to put on a show a porn film type of show.
They decide a lot of people would pay good money to see someone having sex, and that should be them. They get together a group of people and rent a place to shoot the movie. Things do not go as planned.
This is a film in the tradition of Knocked Up, Forgetting Sarah Marshall, Pineapple Express and others. It seems with each movie of this type they become more adult in content, testing the limits of just what society will accept. If people can sit through this film and not be grossed out then society has gotten to be pretty accepting.
Rogen gives a one note performance as Zack. He hammers each joke home and has no subtlety in his performance in any degree. Banks is better as Miri though she never convinces she could or would be part of a porno film. Miri always seems to be holding back, not because of Zack but because she is repulsed by the whole idea.
The film is rated R for profanity, sexual situations and total nudity.
Director Kevin Smith keeps searching for another Clerks and what he gets here is a movie about as well made as Clerks which didnt impress me at all. Smith is stuck in a rut and needs to try something different in order to prove he actually has talent.
If your idea of a good film is one that strings obscenities together one after another, has shots of totally nude performers, and sinks to the lowest levels to try and gain a laugh; well this is the movie for you. You and Zack and Miri deserve each other.
I scored Zack and Miri Make a Porno an obscene 4 out of 10.
