Given Seth Rogen’s recent run of big-screen hits, it’s reasonable to expect that Zack and Miri Make a Porno just might rank alongside Superbad as a surprisingly sharp satire of modern sexuality. Kevin Smith’s place in the director’s chair, however, pretty much guarantees otherwise. From its non-existent story arc to the cast’s “what are we doing here” performances, Zack and Miri is an all-out, top-to-bottom, monumental waste of time. Getting drooled on by an idiot pervert for 90 minutes would be more enjoyable, not to mention a somewhat more realistic experience.
The story, as it is, sees Zack (Rogen) and Miri (Elizabeth Banks) set out to make a porno to alleviate themselves of debt. They assemble a rag-tag group of talent, build some Star Wars-inspired sets and skimpy costumes (what’s a Kevin Smith film without a flimsy Star Wars reference?) and set an early morning call-time to get humping. The sets get demolished (so at least we don’t have to actually sit through the making of Star Whores), and the location moves to the coffee shop where Zack makes his daily bread, most often spent on Fleshlights (look it up online) instead of the electric bill.
After Zack and Miri shoot their cream-delivery-man scene (now that the film-within-the-film has been titled Suck My Cockaccino, the metaphors get even more laborious), one of the film’s token bimbos remarks, “You guys weren’t fuckin’, you were makin’ love,” and both Zack and Miri suddenly realize that — well, I won’t spoil it, but you can probably guess.
The thing is, by the time Smith’s sweet-hearted revelation occurs (while one of the characters is bent over a pile of coffee bean sacks, no less), Zack and Miri Make a Porno has all but lost the audience with racist, homophobic and sophomoric anal sex jokes that fall flat. Unless, of course, you find the idea of the well-hung Lester (Smith stand-by Jason Mewes) pulling out of the anal-loving token bimbo and showering liquid feces on the hapless cameraman below them remotely funny.
The rotten cherry atop a miserable filmography, Zack and Miri Make a Porno makes it official that Smith knows as little about human sexuality as he does about religion, love, real life and, above all else, filmmaking as an art form. If only it went straight to video neverland like the films it sets out to parody, never to be heard from again.
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