Five-Legged Iguana

ZACK AND MIRI
MAKE A PORNO
(Review)

Okay. At this point, I honestly don’t know what to do with Kevin Smith* anymore.
For the record, I love Clerks, and Chasing Amy, I feel, is still his most real and honest film to date. I enjoyed Mallrats and Dogma too, but they both have their own sets of problems.
Now, I passed on Jersey Girl, so for all I know, that could be his hidden masterwork, but to say Clerks II disappointed me would be an understatement of enormous proportions.
At least though, Clerks II had Rosario Dawson, Jason Mewes’ Buffalo Bill, and Jeff Anderson’s revelatory moments in the film’s final stretch; right now, I’m hard-pressed to think of anything good that came out of Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back.
The Reaper Pilot wasn’t anything particularly spectacular either.
Which brings us to Zack and Miri Make a Porno.


Now let’s be clear. This one has its moments too, including a surprisingly moving bit orchestrated to Live, and capped off by Blondie. Yup, you can always get me with a good Blondie musical moment.
Zack and Miri is also blessed to have Brandon Routh and Justin Long, who manage to hijack the film and take it to some insanely hilarious places. Sadly they’re confined to only one key sequence, when I actually held out hope that they would somehow be worked into the “making Clerks, but as a porno” stretch of the movie.
As it is, they’re just there long enough to inadvertently flick the light bulb over Seth Rogen’s head, and help give him the idea of shooting a porn to pay the bills.


And I don’t think the problem is Rogen and Elizabeth Banks either, who’s as charming a screen presence as she always is. As longtime friends Zack Brown and Miriam Linky, the duo makes the most of the central situation the film revolves around.
When the time comes for the emotional games that result from certain narrative eventualities though, they’re beats we’ve definitely seen before.
There’s also an odd sort of compression that goes on where before you know it, we’re suddenly at that point in the script where the tension catalyzes, and then, just as quickly, we’re at the film’s climax.
Sadly, I’m left with the impression that most of the film’s running time is made up of awkward moments where the humour just doesn’t pop. (And the scatological bits really don’t help, either.)
The script is so anemic, compared to either Clerks’ or Chasing Amy’s, that when we hit the gooey and mushy centre of this apparently hard and raunchy piece of candy, the sentiments ring damnably hollow.
Not even the Monroeville setting, Smith stalwarts Anderson and Jason Mewes, nor brief appearances by make-up master Tom Savini—geddtit? Monroeville?!—and Tyler Labine (from Invasion and Reaper)… nay, not even Traci Lords, can save the ship, which just seems to coast, rudderless (Dutch, or otherwise), through middling comedic territory, complete with montage featuring “funny/goofy” dance moves.
You know the one.


I had high hopes for this one, and I went into it really wanting to like it.
Maybe if it had been Zack and Miri and Bobby and Brandon Make a Porno, this might have been an entirely different review, but as it is…
Tell you what: I’ll head back to my cave and give my Clerks DVD a spin, while I await Smith’s horror movie, Red State, which sounds genuinely interesting, given all that he’s said about it.
First though, it appears he’s about to go all Hollywood big budget buddy cop—are we still in the ‘80’s and someone just forgot to send me the memo?—on I-won’t-be-surprised-at-all-if-it-gets-retitled A Couple of Dicks, with Bruce Willis and Tracy Morgan…
Which is something, honestly, I have no idea what to do with either.
If I can’t have Red State yet, maybe Smith should just work with Routh and Long again on something truly hilarious.
Maybe then we can start talking.


* The Kevin Smith who writes and directs films, that is. Not the one who acts, or writes comic books.
Those are different discussions entirely.

(Zack and Miri Make a Porno OS courtesy of aintitcool.com; images courtesy of about.com.)