Movie Review: Zack and Miri Make A Porno

I have a theory that one of the reasons Golden Age-era films are consistently better than what we’re seeing produced today is because of the censorship they were forced to work around. When it came to sex and violence, censorship forced creative solutions, but without censorship this creativity is no longer necessary — and how can less creativity ever be a good thing?

I don’t want to get too sidetracked here, but as an experiment watch Douglas Sirk’s Imitation of Life (1959) followed by Todd Haynes’ Far From Heaven (2002). Haynes tries Sirk on for size but without any of the restrictions Sirk faced. Both are fine films, but making subtext text hurts the latter noticably. It’s true that any number of filmmakers have flourished in a world without limits, but lately Kevin Smith has not been one of them. And restraint, or censorship – if you must – might improve his work considerably.

Few would argue Smith has a unique gift for crafting sharp dialogue, but equally impressive is the ease with which he crafts believable and complicated relationships — a skill fast becoming extinct in filmdom. Chasing Amy (1997), one of the best films of the 90’s, is a small masterpiece in the way it examines love, friendship and human sexuality. It certainly has its share of sexually frank moments, and yes, some of them are uncomfortable, but it never feels crude, just smart.

Crude, however, is dumb, and Zack and Miri Make A Porno is dumb. The relationships are never believable and after a half-hour the vulgarity numbs you to every one of your six senses except the one desiring a bath. This is Smith relying on shock and filth to pull a profit, but it’s at the expense of his considerable gifts as a storyteller of relationships.

My call to restrain Smith doesn’t mean in a way that yields another PG-13 Jersey Girl (2004), but rather for an end to crudity for the sake of crudity. I love the man’s voice, it’s his man-child voice that’s unbearable. Zack and Miri has less point to it than Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back (2001). It’s not a film about a relationship with a little smut in it, it’s a smutty film with a little relationship in it, and not a very well defined one.

Zack (Seth Rogen) and Miri (Elizabeth Banks) are roommates who have been friends since grade school. There’s is a platonic and dysfunctional relationship; both are pressing thirty but neither has done enough with their lives to even cover the electric bill. As eviction looms and one by one the utilities are shut off, little effort is required for Zack to convince Miri that the only way to keep a roof over their head is to produce and star in a low-budget, hardcore porn film. He reasons that if only their former high school classmates purchase the video they’re out of debt. Yeah, the film thinks like that.

What follows is the typical misfits-get-together-and-pull-it-off boilerplate that yields a lot of forced warmth but zero surprises thanks to paint by number plotting and Smith wanting it both ways. He wants to give the burgeoning relationship between Zack and Miri a real heart but at the same time offers up characters uncomfortably comfortable around every imaginable sexual deviancy; willing to themselves have sex with each other and others in front of strangers, and who talk about their own hang ups as though her willingness to serially bed down any guy around and his use of battery-operated companionship is … relatable?

Let’s stop dancing around the subject: Zack and Miri are two sexually disgusting individuals. Most everything that comes out of their foul mouths is cringe-worthy, but not in the insightful way we saw in Chasing Amy or the smartly, hilarious way we saw in Smith’s mind-blowingly good debut, Clerks (1994). Other than a connect-the-dots romantic comedy arc you see coming from a mile away, there’s nothing to these characters that explains their hyper-sexuality, making Zack and Miri nothing more than another cliched romantic comedy … that’s real dirty.

I revisit Kevin Smith movies because of the enormous goodwill he earned straight through to Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back. Unfortunately, his last three films have not only fell short, but way short. So for his own good, let’s censor the man. Force some discipline on him. The talent’s still there, he’s just stopped trying to prove himself.