Zack and Miri Make a Porno

Once the golden boy of Hollywood slackerdom, Kevin Smith has seen his star wane thanks to underwhelming directorial projects like ‘Jersey Girl’ and the frankly unwatchable ‘Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back’. The director of ‘Clerks’ has also had to deal with the inexorable rise of new, more talented comedy mastermind Judd Apatow. Now Smith appears to be fighting back, borrowing Apatow alumni Seth Rogen and Elizabeth Banks for a high-concept comedy romp about a pair of platonic friends who team up to conquer the adult-movie market, with unwanted romantic consequences.

Though it was made months before the current financial crisis, the film’s early stages feel bizarrely relevant as our cash-strapped heroes find themselves ‘out of options and dignity’ and so opt for the only opportunity left to them. This first act showcases the film’s strengths: Rogen and Banks make for very affable leads and Smith’s script, while leaving very little to the imagination, is nicely paced and studded with more than a few memorable one liners.

But as matters progress from dirty chat to actual onscreen humping, the problems increasingly become apparent. The narrative goes out of its way to unite the basest preoccupations of a decade of gross-out comedy: bodily functions, gay jokes, race relations and the hilarious marital habits of black folks, all tied up in a torrent of filthy language that would make Eddie Murphy blush. Smith may have pioneered this kind of upfront sex chat, but the Apatow team refined it. ‘Zack and Miri’ feels uncomfortably like a gruesome game of filth-talk oneupmanship, and it’s hard to care who comes out on top.