Zack and Miri Make A Porno: Movie Review

Zack and Miri Make A Porno: Movie Review

Rating: 4/10
Cast: Seth Rogen, Elizabeth Banks, Jason Mewes, Craig Robinson, Traci Lords
Director: Kevin Smith
Dear, oh dear.
Kevin Smith has swapped that sparkling witty dialogue that he's become known for in previous films for smut and downright crudity - and if you like puerile, then you'll love this.
Zack and Miri Make A Porno is the story of Zack (Rogen) and Miri (Banks), two housemates and long term friends who've fallen on extremely hard times.
Just pre-Thanksgiving, the pair find themselves completely broke and with their power and water cut off and facing eviction from their flat.
However, matters are made even worse when they head to a school reunion and realize just how low their lives have sunk in terms of success and personal growth.
So, faced with ruin and life on the street, on the back of a flippant comment from Miri about how they're going to make money, the duo decide pornography is the way forward.
They begin to recruit a crew and actors, but faced with the reality they'll have to have sex with each other to make ends meet, Zack and Miri begin to realise how exactly they feel about each other.
Will true love out - or will porn win the day?
ZAMMAP (it's catchier that way) is to be brutally blunt, a major disappointment.
Smith's put together a good cast (although Rogen is playing yet another variant of those loser roles he excels so much at) but it just doesn't work as well as it could have done.
Granted, Craig Robinson (warehouse boss Darrell from the US version of The Office) is perhaps one of the best things in the whole film - he steals every scene he's in.
And there are some pretty funny laugh out loud moments scattered throughout - though honestly, that's because of a lot of fairly gross humour.
Smith carries on his Star Wars obsession - Zack and Miri's first attempt is Star Whores, complete with the characters Darth Vibrator, Hung solo et al - although word round the TV2 Movies office is that version already exists.
The problem with ZAMMAP is that it veers so violently into stereotypical rom-com schmaltz at the end that you actually end up feeling cheated out of the film's original premise.
Elizabeth Banks (JD's kooky part-time girlfriend and mother of his child on TV2's Scrubs ) starts off being a likeable character but ends up being annoying as she falls into moping for Zack mode - Rogen's Zack is, as mentioned earlier, a variant on all the roles he plays - although he does have some comic moments (sadly a lot of that is due mainly to crudity), they are few and far between.

There are funny one liners (which won't work by my quoting them out of context) and various pop culture moments - the team discuss what's actually going on on TV2's Lost while Zack and Miri have sex - but overall, Zack and Miri Make A Porno is lacking the money shot.