Zack and Miri Make a Porno (2008)
Kevin Smith has given his new opus a name that tells you exactly what it’s about. Literal-mindedness has always been among Mr. Smith’s calling cards. His first film, about clerks, was called “Clerks.” And so it will hardly be shocking that “Zack and Miri Make a Porno” is about two people, named Zack (Seth Rogen) and Miri (Elizabeth Banks), who make what my copy editors would prefer that I call a pornographic movie. And really, in spite of an avalanche of verbal filth (and a smaller quantum of the visual variety), “Zack and Miri” is not very shocking at all. Mr. Smith has been tinkering with the dirty-mind/soft-heart combination for quite some time, forming a link of sorts between the humanist sexual anarchy of John Waters and the smutty Victorianism of Judd Apatow. He and his characters revel in dialogue that riffs on body parts and bodily fluids, but Mr. Smith’s stories are bathed — metaphorically! — in syrup and schmaltz. So “Zack and Miri Make a Porno,” in spite of its sometimes tiresome, sometimes amusing lewdness, follows a gee-whiz romantic-comedy formula that would not be out of place on the Disney Channel. — A. O. Scott , The New York Times
Title: Zack and Miri Make a Porno
Running Time: 101 Minutes
8Rating:
exasperatingly bad
