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Kevin Smith definitely likes to push his luck. When the Weinstein brothers decided to let the portly, bearded auteur quarterback a risqué-titled mainstream film about making a pornographic movie, the New Jersey-born bespectacled shock merchant writer/director famous for Clerks and its sequel, and architect of the View Askewniverse, treated the invitation as a licence to thrill. However, like most films starring Seth Rogen the piece's bark is bigger than its bite. In other words, the raunchiness of the verbosity is what really causes the adult rating instead of the actions. However, even though Smith's dialogue canon has scattered filth all over the film with the usual witty oral exchanges one would expect between Rogen and such comic luminaries as Justin Long, here playing a hilarious gay porn star, Smith's film still features infamous 1980s starlet Traci Lords, and the woman who nearly brought down the whole adult film industry by performing as a minor has not been cast for her acting ability.
Sex is not portrayed in an entirely crude manner though. In fact, the filming of the uber-low budget hardcore flick shot in the local coffee shop Zack (Rogen) works in is treated as an offshoot to the main thread, the growing genuine chemistry the two leads are feeling towards each other as lovers. Lifelong platonic friends Zack and Miri (Elizabeth Banks) decide to make the pornographic film to ease their mountain of debt and actually experience power and water once more in their house in Monroeville, Pennsylvania. Not entirely presented as a last resort for the duo - the opportunity of rough and ready filmmaking is more naughty aspiration for Zack than economic necessity - the audience can never take the proletarian production seriously because it simply isn't a matter of life and death for the protagonists. Are we supposed to believe they have absolutely no relatives or friends whatsoever that can alleviate their financial woes apart from the hotchpotch of talent they have gathered together? Obviously this was not a great concern for Smith when he was penning the screenplay but by presenting the production as a farce, the budding romance between Zack and Miri is also illustrated as such despite the best efforts of Banks and the overacting of Rogen to convey the emotional message. One can understand that they are a pair of underachievers since their high school days but they should not have been moulded from the same substance as Harry and Lloyd from Dumb and Dumber. These two actually have some intellect and shoving an overly sentimental love story down our throats is a failed attempt to make us forget the crudeness of the whole plot and encourage us to get excited about a saga that simply isn't exciting.
Conversely, Zack and Miri Make a Porno is still uproariously funny. The gross-out shtick obviously shines in a film featuring Smith's clique and Seth "I'm going to break Jude Law's record and make twenty films in a year!" Rogen, and the envelope is unquestionably pushed on numerous occasions, but as long as the guffaws greet the gags, mission accomplished. Hell, with an extensive polish of the narrative to portray more focus, a more suitable substitute for the bizarre soundtrack, and better, less amateurish dramatic acting, Smith could have made a classic.
Neither a great romantic comedy or gross-out effort, the whole thing could have been so much funnier.
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