Wednesday, February 11, 2009
DVD Review: Zack and Miri Make a Porno
THE MOVIE
Zack and Miri Make a Porno is the latest movie from writer/director Kevin Smith, and before I dive into the review proper, I feel I have to explain a little bit about my relationship with his movies. I’m of the
generation that really latched on to Smith’s work, beginning with Clerks (which I rented right when it first came out on video, and my buddies and I laughed so hard we had tears in our eyes), through Mallrats (which I loved at the time, largely due to the tons of comic book references peppered throughout the movie), Chasing Amy, Dogma and Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back (I skipped his initial attempt at “going mainstream,” Jersey Girl, because I saw Gigli and figured that was enough of that). I owned all the DVDs, watched them all with the commentaries – Kevin Smith’s commentaries, particularly with dudes like Ben Affleck at his side, are often more entertaining than the movies themselves. Hell, I even bought the DVD of the short-lived Clerks animated series. But as the years wore on, I enjoyed the films less and less, and the knocks on his movies I’d encounter became harder and harder to defend against, and the more I’d throw them on to re-watch, the more they all started to seem clunky and awkward.
By the time Clerks 2 came out, I felt like I was done with Kevin Smith. My DVDs were gathering dust, though I still found him a pretty funny dude (his long story about working on an aborted Superman film in the An Evening With Kevin Smith lecture/concert/quasi-standup film remains one of the funniest Hollywood insider stories I’ve ever heard, and a friend got me one of his books as a gift, and it was a really fun read). A good buddy of mine (who’d never enjoyed Smith’s previous movies as much as I had) saw it before me, and couldn’t find enough negative words to describe the film. But he’s usually harder to please than I am with movies, so I took his invective with a grain of salt.
Then I got around to watching Clerks 2, and it remains one of the absolute worst movies I have ever seen in my life. I won’t go into what I hated about it here in detail, but suffice it to say that my friend who saw it before me was pretty surprised when he learned I disliked it even more than he did. Clerks 2 was so bad that it made me retroactively hate his other movies; the day after I watched it I traded all my Kevin Smith DVDs in for an Xbox 360 game. If I had to credit Clerks 2 with anything, I guess it’s that it got me to check out Bioshock.
Which brings me to Zack and Miri Make a Porno, Smith’s second attempt to make a movie that appeals to an audience beyond his dwindling core of (admittedly insanely) devoted fans. And on that front, I can say the movie is actually quite successful. It’s easily his best movie, but that’s also the definition of damning with faint praise. The movie benefits from having a cast of real actors (Rosario Dawson, whom I normally find to be a painfully bad actress, wipes the floor with the literal amateurs who populate the cast of Clerks 2) like Seth Rogen and Elizabeth Banks in the lead roles, with the real ringer in the cast being Craig Robinson of Pineapple Express and The Office fame. Justin Long also tears it up in his small part as a gay porn star; his voice alone makes his every line hilarious.
Now, as much as I dislike Smith’s previous movies, I still think he’s a very funny guy, and he’s still got a knack for capturing the reality of relationships in ways few other filmmakers do. There’s a crucial scene about three-quarters into the movie – oh the plot, in case you don’t know already, features Rogen and Banks as the titular Zack and Miri, roommates who are also lifelong platonic buddies who decide to get out of their crippling collective debt by making an ultra-low-rent porno movie to try to sell it to everyone from their high school reunion – where Miri gets upset with Zack because she thinks he (recreationally) slept with one of the other amateur porn stars in their movie, and decides she’s going to get him back by doing a scene with another actor instead of just Zack (Zack’s original plan being, in typical guy fashion, to have Miri only “act” in a scene with him, meanwhile his script calls for him to perform with different women), and it quickly morphs from a conversation ostensibly about their amateur porno movie into one about their actual relationship and how they feel about one another (spoiler alert, in case this is your first movie: they’re secretly in love with each other!). Despite being about a ridiculous, implausible situation, the scene actually gets at a lot of truth about the ways men and women relate to each other romantically, one of the things Smith still does quite well. And on a purely personal level, Smith busts out the Pixies’ “Hey” (one of my favourite songs from my all-time favourite band) for a key emotional sequence in the movie, so I can’t hate on the movie that hard.
The main problem is that Zack and Miri tackles a lot of standard Kevin Smith topics – the differences between guys’ and girls’ approaches to sex, “shocking” dirty jokes, etc. – and, if you’ve seen his earlier films, it all feels a very familiar. Smith’s trodden this ground before, and his dogged determination to stick to what works for him (i.e. small-scale, foulmouthed comedies that play basically just to his existing fanbase), not to mention the fact that elements of the script borrow a bit too much from Judd Apatow flicks like The 40-Year-Old Virgin and Knocked Up (hell, he borrowed half of Apatow’s cast of regulars for Zack and Miri) just makes it all seem very familiar, and not necessarily in a good way. I get the feeling Smith has mellowed in his old age, as his last few movies have been far sappier than his earlier work. And hey, since the original Clerks, he’s gotten married and had a kid, so I certainly can’t fault him for that alone; he can't remain the cynical young man forever. But it feels like he’s afraid he’s losing his edge, as he seems to be trying really hard to retain his cred by wrapping a romance that’s easily as saccharine as the most generic Hollywood romantic comedy in vulgar humour and cheap gross-out gags. But it’s not 1994 anymore, and the Internet has desensitized us all to the sort of stuff that was shocking as recently as 10-15 years ago (a point, weirdly enough, that Smith himself makes – quite hilariously – in the script, about the “mainstreaming of porn”). It’s made dialogue that was shocking when Clerks came out seem weirdly juvenile and almost tame in 2009. Smith seems to be trying to “shock the squares” by filling the script with references to anal sex (a fixation he’s had his whole career; it’s a bit weird), but it just rings false. (I was originally going to put a joke in here about how a fun drinking game would be to get some friends together, throw on the Zack and Miri DVD and take a drink every time there’s an ass reference, but I don’t think I could handle all the alcohol poisoning-related deaths on my conscience.)
My personal opinions about the filmmaker aside, Zack and Miri Make a Porno is a pretty funny comedy that tries too hard to be risqué (to cover for the fact that it tries too hard to be sweet and romantic). Smith is aided by a cast that far outstrips his usual gang of hometown Jersey buddies, and his movies are no longer painful to look at. If he continues to try to make “real” movies, having abandoned his “View Askewniverse” characters (two movies too late, in my opinion), then Zack and Miri could be the first step in a more promising direction. As much as I realize I spent the bulk of this review ragging on Smith and Zack and Miri, it’s really a decent flick that also provides more insight into actual relationships than 95% of other romantic comedies. If you can get past the vulgarity – and there is a lot of it to get past – then Zack and Miri Make a Porno is worth a rental.
GRADE: B-
EXTRAS
The first thing I noticed about the Zack and Miri Make a Porno DVD is that there’s no commentary from Smith, which is strange and disappointing. Strange because Smith almost always does commentary tracks, and disappointing because they’re almost always awesome and fun and insightful. Oh well.
Disc one of the two-disc edition includes a whopping 43 (!) deleted scenes, some of which are funny and some of which are not. The making-of documentary on disc two, ‘Popcorn Porn: The Making of Zack and Miri, is pretty in-depth, and covers the production from being an idea in Smith’s head through to its debut at the Toronto International Film Festival last year. As much as I don’t much care for his movies anymore, Smith’s still an interesting guy to listen to talk about making movies. He’s a really smart, funny, dude who could make a story about walking down to the corner store to buy milk engaging.
Also included is a Comic-Con 2008 panel that covers a lot of the same material as the documentary, but one thing it provides that the doc doesn’t is a glimpse into Smith’s cult of personality. The first couple of people who ask questions are dressed like characters from his movies; I want to believe this is because it’s Comic-Con, where it’s okay to wear ridiculous costumes, but I’ve seen enough sad geeks who’ve clearly used Jay and Silent Bob as their sartorial template in their everyday lives that it’s entirely possible these dorks just dress like that all the time, and they ask questions to the cast like “what’s it like working with Kevin Smith?” There’s also a collection of webisodes created to promote the film online, but it’s sort of redundant watching Smith and his cast tease you with glimpses of a movie you’ve already seen.
The funniest stuff is in the collection of outtakes and bloopers on disc two as well as a short featurette on the improv-heavy scene between Seth Rogen and Justin Long called ‘Seth vs. Justin: Battle for Improvisational Supremacy.’ Kevin Smith is known for packing his DVDs with extras, and Zack and Miri is no different.
Zack and Miri Make a Porno is the latest movie from writer/director Kevin Smith, and before I dive into the review proper, I feel I have to explain a little bit about my relationship with his movies. I’m of the
generation that really latched on to Smith’s work, beginning with Clerks (which I rented right when it first came out on video, and my buddies and I laughed so hard we had tears in our eyes), through Mallrats (which I loved at the time, largely due to the tons of comic book references peppered throughout the movie), Chasing Amy, Dogma and Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back (I skipped his initial attempt at “going mainstream,” Jersey Girl, because I saw Gigli and figured that was enough of that). I owned all the DVDs, watched them all with the commentaries – Kevin Smith’s commentaries, particularly with dudes like Ben Affleck at his side, are often more entertaining than the movies themselves. Hell, I even bought the DVD of the short-lived Clerks animated series. But as the years wore on, I enjoyed the films less and less, and the knocks on his movies I’d encounter became harder and harder to defend against, and the more I’d throw them on to re-watch, the more they all started to seem clunky and awkward.By the time Clerks 2 came out, I felt like I was done with Kevin Smith. My DVDs were gathering dust, though I still found him a pretty funny dude (his long story about working on an aborted Superman film in the An Evening With Kevin Smith lecture/concert/quasi-standup film remains one of the funniest Hollywood insider stories I’ve ever heard, and a friend got me one of his books as a gift, and it was a really fun read). A good buddy of mine (who’d never enjoyed Smith’s previous movies as much as I had) saw it before me, and couldn’t find enough negative words to describe the film. But he’s usually harder to please than I am with movies, so I took his invective with a grain of salt.
Then I got around to watching Clerks 2, and it remains one of the absolute worst movies I have ever seen in my life. I won’t go into what I hated about it here in detail, but suffice it to say that my friend who saw it before me was pretty surprised when he learned I disliked it even more than he did. Clerks 2 was so bad that it made me retroactively hate his other movies; the day after I watched it I traded all my Kevin Smith DVDs in for an Xbox 360 game. If I had to credit Clerks 2 with anything, I guess it’s that it got me to check out Bioshock.
Which brings me to Zack and Miri Make a Porno, Smith’s second attempt to make a movie that appeals to an audience beyond his dwindling core of (admittedly insanely) devoted fans. And on that front, I can say the movie is actually quite successful. It’s easily his best movie, but that’s also the definition of damning with faint praise. The movie benefits from having a cast of real actors (Rosario Dawson, whom I normally find to be a painfully bad actress, wipes the floor with the literal amateurs who populate the cast of Clerks 2) like Seth Rogen and Elizabeth Banks in the lead roles, with the real ringer in the cast being Craig Robinson of Pineapple Express and The Office fame. Justin Long also tears it up in his small part as a gay porn star; his voice alone makes his every line hilarious.
Now, as much as I dislike Smith’s previous movies, I still think he’s a very funny guy, and he’s still got a knack for capturing the reality of relationships in ways few other filmmakers do. There’s a crucial scene about three-quarters into the movie – oh the plot, in case you don’t know already, features Rogen and Banks as the titular Zack and Miri, roommates who are also lifelong platonic buddies who decide to get out of their crippling collective debt by making an ultra-low-rent porno movie to try to sell it to everyone from their high school reunion – where Miri gets upset with Zack because she thinks he (recreationally) slept with one of the other amateur porn stars in their movie, and decides she’s going to get him back by doing a scene with another actor instead of just Zack (Zack’s original plan being, in typical guy fashion, to have Miri only “act” in a scene with him, meanwhile his script calls for him to perform with different women), and it quickly morphs from a conversation ostensibly about their amateur porno movie into one about their actual relationship and how they feel about one another (spoiler alert, in case this is your first movie: they’re secretly in love with each other!). Despite being about a ridiculous, implausible situation, the scene actually gets at a lot of truth about the ways men and women relate to each other romantically, one of the things Smith still does quite well. And on a purely personal level, Smith busts out the Pixies’ “Hey” (one of my favourite songs from my all-time favourite band) for a key emotional sequence in the movie, so I can’t hate on the movie that hard.
The main problem is that Zack and Miri tackles a lot of standard Kevin Smith topics – the differences between guys’ and girls’ approaches to sex, “shocking” dirty jokes, etc. – and, if you’ve seen his earlier films, it all feels a very familiar. Smith’s trodden this ground before, and his dogged determination to stick to what works for him (i.e. small-scale, foulmouthed comedies that play basically just to his existing fanbase), not to mention the fact that elements of the script borrow a bit too much from Judd Apatow flicks like The 40-Year-Old Virgin and Knocked Up (hell, he borrowed half of Apatow’s cast of regulars for Zack and Miri) just makes it all seem very familiar, and not necessarily in a good way. I get the feeling Smith has mellowed in his old age, as his last few movies have been far sappier than his earlier work. And hey, since the original Clerks, he’s gotten married and had a kid, so I certainly can’t fault him for that alone; he can't remain the cynical young man forever. But it feels like he’s afraid he’s losing his edge, as he seems to be trying really hard to retain his cred by wrapping a romance that’s easily as saccharine as the most generic Hollywood romantic comedy in vulgar humour and cheap gross-out gags. But it’s not 1994 anymore, and the Internet has desensitized us all to the sort of stuff that was shocking as recently as 10-15 years ago (a point, weirdly enough, that Smith himself makes – quite hilariously – in the script, about the “mainstreaming of porn”). It’s made dialogue that was shocking when Clerks came out seem weirdly juvenile and almost tame in 2009. Smith seems to be trying to “shock the squares” by filling the script with references to anal sex (a fixation he’s had his whole career; it’s a bit weird), but it just rings false. (I was originally going to put a joke in here about how a fun drinking game would be to get some friends together, throw on the Zack and Miri DVD and take a drink every time there’s an ass reference, but I don’t think I could handle all the alcohol poisoning-related deaths on my conscience.)
My personal opinions about the filmmaker aside, Zack and Miri Make a Porno is a pretty funny comedy that tries too hard to be risqué (to cover for the fact that it tries too hard to be sweet and romantic). Smith is aided by a cast that far outstrips his usual gang of hometown Jersey buddies, and his movies are no longer painful to look at. If he continues to try to make “real” movies, having abandoned his “View Askewniverse” characters (two movies too late, in my opinion), then Zack and Miri could be the first step in a more promising direction. As much as I realize I spent the bulk of this review ragging on Smith and Zack and Miri, it’s really a decent flick that also provides more insight into actual relationships than 95% of other romantic comedies. If you can get past the vulgarity – and there is a lot of it to get past – then Zack and Miri Make a Porno is worth a rental.
GRADE: B-
EXTRAS
The first thing I noticed about the Zack and Miri Make a Porno DVD is that there’s no commentary from Smith, which is strange and disappointing. Strange because Smith almost always does commentary tracks, and disappointing because they’re almost always awesome and fun and insightful. Oh well.
Disc one of the two-disc edition includes a whopping 43 (!) deleted scenes, some of which are funny and some of which are not. The making-of documentary on disc two, ‘Popcorn Porn: The Making of Zack and Miri, is pretty in-depth, and covers the production from being an idea in Smith’s head through to its debut at the Toronto International Film Festival last year. As much as I don’t much care for his movies anymore, Smith’s still an interesting guy to listen to talk about making movies. He’s a really smart, funny, dude who could make a story about walking down to the corner store to buy milk engaging.
Also included is a Comic-Con 2008 panel that covers a lot of the same material as the documentary, but one thing it provides that the doc doesn’t is a glimpse into Smith’s cult of personality. The first couple of people who ask questions are dressed like characters from his movies; I want to believe this is because it’s Comic-Con, where it’s okay to wear ridiculous costumes, but I’ve seen enough sad geeks who’ve clearly used Jay and Silent Bob as their sartorial template in their everyday lives that it’s entirely possible these dorks just dress like that all the time, and they ask questions to the cast like “what’s it like working with Kevin Smith?” There’s also a collection of webisodes created to promote the film online, but it’s sort of redundant watching Smith and his cast tease you with glimpses of a movie you’ve already seen.
The funniest stuff is in the collection of outtakes and bloopers on disc two as well as a short featurette on the improv-heavy scene between Seth Rogen and Justin Long called ‘Seth vs. Justin: Battle for Improvisational Supremacy.’ Kevin Smith is known for packing his DVDs with extras, and Zack and Miri is no different.
Labels: comedy, DVD review
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