Zack and Miri Make A Porno
Written and Directed by: Kevin Smith
Starring: Seth Rogan, Elizabeth Banks, Traci Lords, Jason Mewes, Craig Robinson
Rated: R on appeal for strong crude sexual content including dialogue, graphic nudity and pervasive language.
Parental Notes: This is a film about a group of people making a pornographic movie. It contains frank discussions of sex, lots of graphic nudity, and some very, very dirty humor. It was re-edited to receive an R rating instead of the original NC-17.
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Kevin Smith has the ability to blend slapstick and over-the-top gross-out humor with a vein of real sweetness and humanity, and “Zack and Miri Make a Porno” is no exception. Here, though, the sexual content that’s always present in Smith’s films is cranked up to eleven.
The protagonists are a couple of engaging losers. Zack (Seth Rogan) and Miri (Elizabeth Banks) have been platonic best friends since grade-school. They share an apartment, but are up to their ears in debt. When they go to their high school reunion and discover that the boyfriend of a classmate is a gay porn star raking in the bucks, Zack has an epiphany: they can make enough to pay off their debts by making a low-budget, independent porn flick! He talks Miri into it, and they both agree that what happens in the porno stays in the porno; no letting having sex on film make things “weird” between them.
You can imagine how well that works.
Anyway, they bring in an old buddy who used to film the varsity basketball games back in high school to run the camera, Zack’s coworker from the coffee shop agrees to be the producer (he’s looking forward to vetting potential starlets’ assets), they have a casting call, and they’re off and running. Everything goes pretty well until Zack and Miri’s big scene, when the pair wind up making love instead of just acting, and they realize they each have long-buried feelings for each other.
The plot may be full of standard tropes (when was the last time you saw a movie with platonic best friends of the appropriate genders that didn’t end with them getting together?) but it has plenty of laughs and some genuinely sweet moments scattered through it. Rogan and Banks have surprisingly good chemistry, and the moment in which their characters realize their feelings for each other is incredibly intimate and sweet.
Sure, the laughs are pretty vulgar — Kevin Smith seems to specialize in the sort of vulgarity that becomes acceptable simply by being so incredibly over the top. Once you’ve heard enough swear words close enough together, they cease to be shocking and simply become ridiculous.
This is not a movie for people who don’t like Kevin Smith’s work. Or who can’t stand a little (okay, a lot of) nudity. If you love Smith and his work and enjoy the sort of over-the-top vulgarity, profanity, and graphic nudity that earned early cuts of “Zack and Miri” an NC-17 rating, then you shouldn’t miss it.