Kevin Smith has the unique ability to find the tenderest of emotions in the most profane of situations, and that talent is what makes ZACK AND MIRI MAKE A PORNO more than just a one-note dirty joke. Not that there aren’t a lot of dirty jokes working here. There are. A LOT. Frequently. Mostly.
The Zack and Miri in question (Seth Rogan and Elizabeth Banks) have been best friends forever and roommates for the 10 years since they graduated from high school. There is nothing they don’t know about each other, and nothing they can’t discuss with one another, including their preferred sex toys. Platonic friends, it is important to note because that’s all about to change, but it takes more than just a moment of hormonal weakness and the cable being out. It takes a 10-year high school reunion, the revelation that Miri’s crush is now the significant other of a gay porn star, and the video taken surreptitiously of Miri in her granny panties to all coalesce just as the duo have their power and water cut off for non-payment. Zack, who has spent 10 years whipping up espresso drinks at the local coffee house, is not what is characterized as bright, but he is suddenly focused for the first time in his slacker life and that’s when the idea is born as they burn their unpaid bills in a garbage can in their living room to keep warm. They will make a porno in which they will star, sell it to the class mailing list, which will not only get them out of debt, but it will also get them a decent apartment. It gets more complicated than that. Zack’s hen-pecked and racially touchy co-worked at Bean N Gone will front the money for the camera in exchange for a share of the profits and a chance to audition the, ahem, talent (he’s just going to look, really). Local strippers will add their distinctive and novel talents to the action, and hockey player with anger management issues will record it all. As Zack puts it in a burst of innocence, naïveté and zeal that is what got pretty much every filmmaker into the business and then into trouble, it’s movie, what could go wrong?
The film they are making it pornographic, and so are the auditions and planning, but the relationship between Zack and Miri is so honest, so accepting, that it’s not just admirable, it’s enviable. When they finally do have sex for the cameras, of course it turns out differently than planned. Of course none of the talking they did beforehand about it matters. Of course by then the audience is so emotionally invested in these amiable folks that they are rooting for them to realize that they are the ones they have been waiting for. As for the rest of the cast, including Smith veteran Jason Mewes and porn-legend Traci Lords, they are quirky, but are so matter-of-fact about what they are doing with dildos and soap bubbles and fiercely simulated penetration, that it somehow doesn’t come across as dirty. Mostly.
Smith never makes it sentimental, but he nails the emotions with a deft touch. It’s not what Zack and Miri say to each other, it’s how Rogan and Banks say it and how Smith can turn a particularly inept moment from a very low-rent porno into the stuff of which true romance is made. And how a look can change everything, and another one change everything again. On the other end of the spectrum, he lards the film with political incorrectness, making sport of the pretension and the opportunism of it. His women are empowered, even if some of them are naked, yet there is no one in this film with an ego complex, except maybe Brandon, the gay porn star played by Justin Long in a performance that takes camp and true passion into unexpected, wonderful territories. They’re all mooks trying to get by and maybe grab just a little piece of the American Dream. Or at least be able to take a shower at home again.
ZACK AND MIRI MAKE A PORNO celebrates friendship, sexuality, and true love without making them mutually exclusive. What makes it a pithy and piquant delight is that it does so by using the sort of idioms that raise the highest hackles among the self-righteous keepers of public morals. The juxtaposition is breathtaking and oddly refreshing. This ain’t a romance novel, but it is the most romantic film involving porno that’s ever been made.
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