Zack and Miri Make a Porno (2008)
Directed by Kevin Smith
Lifelong platonic friends Zack and Miri look to solve their respective cash-flow problems by making an adult film together. As the cameras roll, however, the duo begin to sense that they may have more feelings for each other than they previously thought.
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After convincing fellow coffeehouse counterman Delaney (Craig Robinson) to spend his money on a film as the producer instead of on a flat-screen, they put together a motley assortment of actors, aka a cast, a cameraman, build sets and plan a plot and characters around "Star Wars."
They begin with an eroticized reinvention of Star Wars, which remains one of Smith’s most exhaustively referenced obsessions.
I expected Star Wars or similar sci-fi debates amongst underachieving nerds; crassly inventive, testosterone-fueled trash talk I might require a translator to decipher; and the sometimes soft center that lies beneath the adolescent exteriors of the potty-mouth master’s characters.
True to form, Smith can be indulgent here, leading to the odd dry stretch (a tiresome geek-out digression into Star Wars porn, for one).
They are so committed to this project, which begins its life as a Star Wars parody (this is a Kevin Smith movie, after all) before morphing into a multiple-partners marathon set in a Starbucks-style coffee joint, they decide to perform the film's centerpiece sex scene.
To that end, the crew's first attempt is called "Star Whores" — "Star Wars" being a favorite subject of Smith.
Having gone soft with Jersey Girl (which is looking better all the time) only to regroup by remaking Clerks solely for the diehards, Smith here rounds up Judd Apatow 's familiars (Rogen, Banks, Craig Robinson , The 40-Year-Old Virgin's Gerry Bednob ), pairs them with his own regulars ( Jason Mewes , Jeff Anderson ) plus Traci Lords , and puts "Porno" in the title.
He is yet another version of the slackers that Rogen has been turning out since Judd Apatow cast him as one of Steve Carell's feckless friends in The 40-Year-Old Virgin.
There's no Jay and Silent Bob (although Jay, Jason Mewes, does appear in another role), the film is more polished (Smith used to just throw his actors in front of the camera, but now seems to be making the effort to actually set up shots), and it even steals most of its cast from Apatow's movies -- from Rogen and Banks to supporting roles featuring Craig Robinson (Knocked Up), Gerry Bednob (The 40-Year-Old Virgin), and Justin Long (Walk Hard).
The foul-mouthed, pop-culture-and-sex obsessed guy-pals of The 40-Year-Old Virgin, Knocked Up and Superbad are the spiritual children of Dante Hicks and Randal Graves in Clerks.
Seth Rogen, the brightest spark in Hollywood’s new-age comic circuitry (The 40-year-old Virgin, Knocked Up), is the bearded slacker who cannot pay the bills in the house he shares with platonic friend Elizabeth Banks.
Rogen is steady once again doing his young Albert Brooks thing, and Justin Long and Brandon Routh contribute memorable cameos, but Banks is the standout cast member, showing that she can add another dimension to her fun and naughty character from "The 40-Year-Old Virgin."
While Clerks II and Zack and Miri Make a Porno also share such a tag, the writer/director delivers a devastating deconstruction of the male ego with this ‘penetrating’ portrait of affection and defeat.
With 1990s films such as Clerks and Chasing Amy, Kevin Smith pioneered the kind of tender raunch that, under Judd Apatow, has come to dominate American comedy.
Having gone soft with Jersey Girl (which is looking better all the time) only to regroup by remaking Clerks solely for the diehards, Smith here rounds up Judd Apatow 's familiars (Rogen, Banks, Craig Robinson , The 40-Year-Old Virgin's Gerry Bednob ), pairs them with his own regulars ( Jason Mewes , Jeff Anderson ) plus Traci Lords , and puts "Porno" in the title.
What passes for sophistication in the Smith oeuvre was in his early films, Clerks and Chasing Amy.
Jeff Anderson, best known as Randal Graves in the “Clerks” franchise, plays Deacon, a buddy who owns a camera and becomes the director.
He has barely developed beyond the point-and-shoot direction of "Clerks."
While Clerks II and Zack and Miri Make a Porno also share such a tag, the writer/director delivers a devastating deconstruction of the male ego with this ‘penetrating’ portrait of affection and defeat.
With 1990s films such as Clerks and Chasing Amy, Kevin Smith pioneered the kind of tender raunch that, under Judd Apatow, has come to dominate American comedy.
Amiable and engaging in person and a filmmaker for whom comic and movie nerds so desperately want to root, Smith makes two kinds of movies: romantic comedies and bromantic comedies, with Chasing Amy—his one legitimately great movie—the crossover hybrid hit.
What passes for sophistication in the Smith oeuvre was in his early films, Clerks and Chasing Amy.
Not quite as racy as its title might suggest, Porno is Smith's sweetest comedy since Chasing Amy.
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Unlike the kids in the Rooney-Garland “Babes in Arms,” they have no particular talents, and only one of them is pretty to look at, but, for the sake of the movie, they will make out in front of the camera.
As for the just-plain-folks angle, last year saw Jeff Bridges , Ted Danson , and their own small-stars shrugging their way through The Amateurs—and Blue Movie it wasn't, however slight an homage it was to Terry Southern 's literary wet dream in which famous faces are buried in regions nether and yon.
For all the nakedness and bizarre complications, the cast recalls the eccentric crew of Tim Burton's "Ed Wood": supportive, protective and good company.
What more does any portfolio need than "Knocked Up," "Superbad" and this romantic comedy to demonstrate how he's turned obscenity into a cottage industry.
Smith isn't as deft an observer of young adults as Judd Apatow ("Superbad," "Pineapple Express").
The foul-mouthed, pop-culture-and-sex obsessed guy-pals of The 40-Year-Old Virgin, Knocked Up and Superbad are the spiritual children of Dante Hicks and Randal Graves in Clerks.
More significantly, even though writer-director-editor Smith has been slapping his raunchy-talking comedies onto big screens since 1994's "Clerks," it took Judd Apatow's ultra-crude, warmhearted hits such as "Knocked Up" and "Superbad" to loosen up audiences larger than Smith's cult base.
YOU'D have thought the teaming of uber-schlub Seth Rogen ( Knocked Up, Superbad) with grunge-movie maestro Kevin Smith ( Clerks, Chasing Amy) would have been a match made in heaven.
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After enlisting several friends and embarking on a casting process reminiscent of The Full Monty, the couple struggle to keep the project afloat once sexual jealousy suddenly kicks in.
This movie could have been an effervescent neo-screwball romance, Bringing Up Baby with nut-sack jokes.