Kevin Smith has always been a very polarizing director. You either find his movies hilarious and good-natured or you think they are complete crap. I think this can be attributed to the amount of frat boys and stoners who make up his core fan base and thus make it harder for film buffs to embrace his sense of poignancy and hilarity that is often displayed in his films, with the exception of “Jersey Girl.” Keeping this in mind I walked into the opening day screening of “Zack and Miri make a Porno” with some cautious optimism because I happen to be one of the people who rather enjoy Smith’s films. I can honestly say that this was one of his best efforts in a long time. It totally makes up for “Jersey Girl” and helped me remember why I fell in love with Smith’s films in the first place.
The plot of the film is pretty straight foreword: the title tells you everything you need to know. The reason that Zack and Miri have to make a porno is because they are behind on their rent, water, electric, and other utility bills so the only logical way to raise money in a quick way is to make a porno and hope that is becomes successful enough to make their troubles go away.
Zack is played by the reliable Seth Rogen and Miri is played by the gorgeous Elizabeth Banks and they have some of the best chemistry I’ve seen put on a movie screen in a long time. The two are perfect for the types of roles Smith has created, and they deliver his dialogue better than some of Smith’s stock cast of regulars, who also appear in this film. The movie is sweet-natured and charming and has a lot of great inside jokes for Kevin Smith buffs. They shoot the porno in the place where Zack works, sort of like how Smith shot “Clerks” and they use a hockey stick as a boom microphone, again like “Clerks.” So this should appease the die hard fans out there who will get very upset if Smith doesn’t make self-references like he usually does in all of his films.
The real joy of this film, however, is the supporting cast of characters. Smith steps outside of his comfort zone a little because he only uses two people from any of his earlier films- Jeff Anderson and, of course, Jason Mewes who play the film’s cinematographer/editor of the porno and one of its stars respectively.
There are also a couple of porn stars played by real life porn stars Tracey Lords and Katie Morgan who are quite funny in their roles, especially Lords who plays a character named Bubbles whose talent cannot be reprinted here. However, the funniest character in the supporting cast is Delaney, played by Craig Robinson. The character ends up stealing the entire movie with one-liners that, again, cannot be reprinted here and are some of the funniest lines Smith has had in a long time. He single-handedly steals the whole movie and makes me hope that Smith will put him in the next one he makes.
There were some problems I had with the time jump towards the end of the movie however. It comes in at a rather abrupt time and we would like to have stayed with Zack after he makes a very important decision concerning his and Miri’s relationship. This is something Smith has done before in his other movies, so it isn’t any real surprise when he does it but I would like to see him stop relying on the tired old “three months later” title card and just keep the story with the characters the whole time.
That being said I think that this is Smith’s best film in at least six years so it is very much worth going to see. Just remember one thing though, this movie is still geared towards his general audience, so if you don’t fall into that category you might want to consider seeing “High School Musical 3” instead.
