Kelly Wand"Zach and Miri Make A Porno" review
January 21st 2009 11:46
The hottest love scene between Rogen and Banks since the bathtub one implied in “40 Year Old Virgin”!
Kevin Smith movies that don’t take place in the Kevin Smith oeuvre are officially more watchable. Here Smith gets sappy and Apatow (i.e., Sapatow), inordinately supported by the best poo jokes he’s ever written*, likable performances, and a refreshing self-disinterest. Watching Zach and Miri’s like taking a morning constitutional in a friendly dumb pink goo. Which these days is high-end.
Seth Rogen plays his usual shiftless-shlub-who-learns-re sponsibility-by-effortlessly- getting-hot-blondes-to-have-s ex-with-him, only this one’s named Zach (spoiler alert). In four movies now and counting, Rogen’s played a stoned, panicky, hilarious, easily annoyed shambling mound of frizz who moonlights as a male lead, although to be fair the true test of his range won’t be till he finally plays a skinny man with his shit together. We’ve now seen this same character learn the same life lessons (more or less) three times in only two years, and still we keep going back to see him relearn them. It’s almost like he’s not actually learning them. If we neither want nor believe in the Lovable Stoner's redemption, why bother repeatedly implying it? But I digress.
Elegant Elizabeth Banks plays Miri, Zach's hot, blonde, inexplicably platonic friend since grade school, who’s also his roommate and soulmate, although girls are like this are technically everyone’s soulmate. The way Banks plays her, Miri’s not much like Zach; she wears dorky underwear and talks in breathy thoughtful murmurs while he bounces off the walls and fires off hilariously profane zingers. She’s inherently passive, which at least goes a sliver towards explaining why she and Zach have never slept together although not really sufficiently. Even though both of them are smart and personable, neither has a decent job (Banks' place of employment doesn't figure much into the plot), and when their financial situation turns abruptly, arbitrarily dire, they have no relatives or other friends or anywhere else to go. Maybe they just have no interest in other people, however hard they try. Though the whole story arc hinges on their history, Zach and Miri are curiously sexual ciphers. It’s implied that she and Zach have never so much as attempted any experimental physical contact over the decades, although why this is so is left a little vague. It also seems overly convenient if not far-fetched in Banks' case that neither of them has a single straggling suitor in the woodpile to complicate matters, or that anyone who looks like Banks would need to resort to shamelessly throwing herself at a former quarterback at her high school reunion (Brandon Routh, looking unconvincingly uncomfortable). Fortunately for them, what Zach and Miri do have in common is just enough to keep a relationship alive in these trying times: poverty and a mutual appreciation for Rogen’s poo and cock jokes.
The charmingly threadbare premise is that when they run out of rent money after he buys some skates, Zach convinces Miri to make a porno to raise cash, during the course of which they discover their undying love for one another, which has been plain all along to everyone but them because love is dumb, especially in romantic comedies. Along the way, there’s a music video montage of their hastily hired actors and crew posing in pornographic Star Wars outfits rather than actually shooting any scenes in them, and later on a tender scene where the same folks all pitch in to restore Zach and Miri’s water and electricity, both of which come on simultaneously seconds before they knock and enter to have another celebration montage.
There’s not much in the way of conflict or story save for the selective obliviousness of the two main characters and not much in the way of porn either, but the movie has a pleasant buzz and funnier dialogue than expected; usually in Kevin Smith movies you feel like everyone’s trying too hard to force the jokes (except Smith). His cast here helps a lot, including Katie Morgan (full-frontal), Jason Mewes (full-frontal), a middle-aged Traci Lords (who curiously resembles a raptor but isn’t given much to do), and cheery Craig Robinson, who at this point probably deserves his own movie. But the MVP award goes to the tragically underrated Elizabeth Banks, who once again fashions an original, textured character out of spare parts and at one point has to convey a crucial story point using only subtle changes of facial expression in long shot from across a crowded room.
Z&M’s definitely a featherweight on the comedy meter, and the poo meter, and you won’t even remember it before it’s over. But one takes any combination of Elizabeth Banks and porn where one finds them.
*Real poo rarely looks this comedically benign, although granted it is Katie Morgan’s.
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