The emergence of Judd Apatow as American cinema's king of comedy must feel like something of a double-edged sword for Kevin Smith. On the one hand, films like The 40 Year-Old Virgin, Knocked Up and Superbad have brought mainstream credibility to the kind of raunchy/sweet, pop culture-referencing, slacker comedies that were Smith's stock-in-trade for so many years. On the other hand, Apatow's refinement of the formula has left Smith's films looking more amateurish and crude than ever. His zero-budget debut Clerks remains his best work, almost by default, but it is dismaying to see how little he has advanced as either a writer or director during the subsequent 14 years, in which he has made eight increasingly unimpressive features. With the best will in the world, Smith is a bad filmmaker who shows no signs of developing beyond his current state, so maybe all you need to know about Zack and Miri Make a Porno is that it's just another Kevin Smith film, no better or worse than his standard fare, and that should give you an idea of whether you'll enjoy it or not.
At least the success of Apatow's films has given Smith a few new comic performers to work with, although he doesn't really know how best to use them. Both Seth Rogen and Elizabeth Banks – who play the title characters – are skilled comic actors who have developed strong screen personas that they utilise again here, and for a while, the film floats along on their charm alone. They're been friends since school and they now live (platonically) together in an apartment that they barely manage to maintain by working menial jobs. At the start of this film, their finances have finally begun to get on top of them, and when Zack thoughtlessly spends the last of his money on a sex toy, their water and power is cut, leaving them cold and in the dark, huddling around a burning trash can which sits in their living room. Desperate to find some cash before they are eventually turfed out of the building altogether, Zack suddenly hits on the idea of making their own porn film, after being inspired by meeting a gay porn star (Justin Long, whose brief performance is the movie's funniest) at a high-school reunion.
After tossing out various ideas (Lawrence of A-Labia? Fuckback Mountain?), Zack and Miri eventually settle on Star Whores, and they begin to put a crew together, with Zack's henpecked colleague Delaney (Craig Robinson) reluctantly putting up the cash when he's told he can oversee the "Titty Auditions", and Zack's pal Deacon (Smith regular Jeff Anderson) signs up as cameraman. The male half of the cast comprises of the effete theatre actor Barry (Ricky Mabe) and the sex-mad dumbbell Lester (Jason Mewes), while the leading female roles are taken by Bubbles and Stacey (real-life porn stars Traci Lords and Katie Morgan); but before they can get started, a stroke of ill-fortune forces them to relocate to Zack's coffee shop after hours, where they covertly shoot their re-titled film Swallow my Cockaccino. The big question here is whether filming a love scene together will finally force Zack and Miri to acknowledge the unspoken but obvious love that exists between them. This storyline is supposed to form the emotional backbone of Smith's film, but his cack-handed approach renders it useless, with the attraction between the pair being so blatant from the start, one grows weary of Smith's attempts to prolong the inevitable with the silly obstacles he throws in their way. Rogen and Banks are appealing, but together they generate little heat, and the film's big turning point, when their on-camera sex scene segues into something deeper, doesn't work at all. One is reminded of a scene late in The 40 Year-Old Virgin, when a bewildered but grateful Rogen encounters Banks frolicking in the bathtub, and that sequence is both funnier and sexier than anything Zack and Miri can whip up.
It's clear that Smith lacks the nuance or maturity to find any emotional resonance in his story, but Zack and Miri is also desperately unfunny. To be honest, I've never found much to laugh at in Smith's films; his dialogue is forced and obvious, and as Smith has no ability to direct actors, the delivery is often stilted. Choices cuts from Zack and Miri include someone asking "Can I have a coffee...black?" only for Craig Robinson to reply, "Can't you see we're busy...White?"; or how about one character saying "Can you believe this shit?" just in time for another, covered in faeces, to turn up and respond, "Can you believe this shit!". The "shit shot", as Kevin Smith has described it in interviews, is indicative of another of his flaws; the gag is set up and executed in such a laboured, feeble manner (Smith unwisely edits his own films, of course) it loses whatever impact it may have had in the hands of a skilled filmmaker. On the other hand, Zack and Miri's other attempt to shock the viewer falls flat for a different reason – the full-frontal male nude shot feels a little passé when the superior Apatow productions Walk Hard and Forgetting Sarah Marshall have already turned 2008 into the Year of the Cock.
Perhaps it's a little unfair to be constantly comparing Smith's work with Apatow's, but that's where the bar currently sits for this kind of film, and Smith falls short in every single regard. He doesn't help himself when he stages a confrontation between Robinson and Gerry Bednob that plays out like a pale imitation of a similar sequence Bednob shared with Romany Malco in The 40 Year-Old Virgin, but almost everything in Zack and Miri feels stale and irrelevant. I have nothing against Kevin Smith himself (he actually seems to be a very witty and likable individual, whose gift for spinning anecdotes makes his An Evening With Kevin Smith DVDs far funnier than any of his features), but the guy is not a filmmaker, and with every new shabby, unimaginative and juvenile offering, it seems increasingly obvious that he's simply wasting everyone's time.
At least the success of Apatow's films has given Smith a few new comic performers to work with, although he doesn't really know how best to use them. Both Seth Rogen and Elizabeth Banks – who play the title characters – are skilled comic actors who have developed strong screen personas that they utilise again here, and for a while, the film floats along on their charm alone. They're been friends since school and they now live (platonically) together in an apartment that they barely manage to maintain by working menial jobs. At the start of this film, their finances have finally begun to get on top of them, and when Zack thoughtlessly spends the last of his money on a sex toy, their water and power is cut, leaving them cold and in the dark, huddling around a burning trash can which sits in their living room. Desperate to find some cash before they are eventually turfed out of the building altogether, Zack suddenly hits on the idea of making their own porn film, after being inspired by meeting a gay porn star (Justin Long, whose brief performance is the movie's funniest) at a high-school reunion.
After tossing out various ideas (Lawrence of A-Labia? Fuckback Mountain?), Zack and Miri eventually settle on Star Whores, and they begin to put a crew together, with Zack's henpecked colleague Delaney (Craig Robinson) reluctantly putting up the cash when he's told he can oversee the "Titty Auditions", and Zack's pal Deacon (Smith regular Jeff Anderson) signs up as cameraman. The male half of the cast comprises of the effete theatre actor Barry (Ricky Mabe) and the sex-mad dumbbell Lester (Jason Mewes), while the leading female roles are taken by Bubbles and Stacey (real-life porn stars Traci Lords and Katie Morgan); but before they can get started, a stroke of ill-fortune forces them to relocate to Zack's coffee shop after hours, where they covertly shoot their re-titled film Swallow my Cockaccino. The big question here is whether filming a love scene together will finally force Zack and Miri to acknowledge the unspoken but obvious love that exists between them. This storyline is supposed to form the emotional backbone of Smith's film, but his cack-handed approach renders it useless, with the attraction between the pair being so blatant from the start, one grows weary of Smith's attempts to prolong the inevitable with the silly obstacles he throws in their way. Rogen and Banks are appealing, but together they generate little heat, and the film's big turning point, when their on-camera sex scene segues into something deeper, doesn't work at all. One is reminded of a scene late in The 40 Year-Old Virgin, when a bewildered but grateful Rogen encounters Banks frolicking in the bathtub, and that sequence is both funnier and sexier than anything Zack and Miri can whip up.
It's clear that Smith lacks the nuance or maturity to find any emotional resonance in his story, but Zack and Miri is also desperately unfunny. To be honest, I've never found much to laugh at in Smith's films; his dialogue is forced and obvious, and as Smith has no ability to direct actors, the delivery is often stilted. Choices cuts from Zack and Miri include someone asking "Can I have a coffee...black?" only for Craig Robinson to reply, "Can't you see we're busy...White?"; or how about one character saying "Can you believe this shit?" just in time for another, covered in faeces, to turn up and respond, "Can you believe this shit!". The "shit shot", as Kevin Smith has described it in interviews, is indicative of another of his flaws; the gag is set up and executed in such a laboured, feeble manner (Smith unwisely edits his own films, of course) it loses whatever impact it may have had in the hands of a skilled filmmaker. On the other hand, Zack and Miri's other attempt to shock the viewer falls flat for a different reason – the full-frontal male nude shot feels a little passé when the superior Apatow productions Walk Hard and Forgetting Sarah Marshall have already turned 2008 into the Year of the Cock.
Perhaps it's a little unfair to be constantly comparing Smith's work with Apatow's, but that's where the bar currently sits for this kind of film, and Smith falls short in every single regard. He doesn't help himself when he stages a confrontation between Robinson and Gerry Bednob that plays out like a pale imitation of a similar sequence Bednob shared with Romany Malco in The 40 Year-Old Virgin, but almost everything in Zack and Miri feels stale and irrelevant. I have nothing against Kevin Smith himself (he actually seems to be a very witty and likable individual, whose gift for spinning anecdotes makes his An Evening With Kevin Smith DVDs far funnier than any of his features), but the guy is not a filmmaker, and with every new shabby, unimaginative and juvenile offering, it seems increasingly obvious that he's simply wasting everyone's time.
