Zack et Miri font un porno

First off, do not watch this with your parent, grandparents or in-laws. You can definitely feel that this is a Kevin Smith feel, and the fact that it has Jason Mewes in it could have been a strong hint also. Zack and Miri Make a Porno is a strange but enjoyable love story, cleverly written by Smith so that you do actually feel the romance behind the porn.

No this movie isn't a major Hollywood blockbuster, and it is definitely not for everyone, if you're a prude give it a miss, but if light hearted and don't mind movies with the full range of body organs then I would recommend watching this!

As Jackie Treehorn laments in The Big Lebowski, pornos these days lack plot, and production values, and feelings. Kevin Smith's "Zack and Miri Make a Porno" would make Jackie quite proud.

The basic plot revolves around two friends, Zack and Miri. The two have a platonic relationship and live together. As they hit dire financial straits, Zack suggests they should make a porno and sell it to make money to pay rent, utilities, etc.

I went into this film with some hesitation. I left quite impressed. Seth Rogen proves he can convey emotion and still be funny. Elizabeth Banks provides the perfect on-screen mate for Rogen. However, I feel, as did others who saw the preview, that Craig Robinson (Darrell from The Office) steals nearly every scene he is in.

Zack and Miri heartily earns its R rating. It is easy to see how the MPAA nearly rated it NC-17. No matter the rating, I would whole-heartedly recommend this movie to anyone (with the exception of grandparents).

Although this movie had a nice start,with quite a few good jokes it failed to become much more than that.I was hoping to see something different,a breath of fresh air in the mass off generic,cheap teenage comedies.Unfortunately Zack and Miri are stuck somewhere in the middle of an sandwich and it's not pleasant at all.The first half of the movie I admire the most.This part is filled with something,not to say original but different,and actually has something fresh to bring to audience.Closer we are getting to ending movie starts dragging us in different direction,from unique and funny comedy towards cheap romantic flick filled with every possible cliché there is in a book.Actually it started becoming so bad it literally erased all enjoyable moments this movie did offer.Only thing that stopped me from turning it off was pure boredom.Disappointed,to say at least.

I feel like I should let everyone reading this know of the bias I had in favor of this film going in. In spite of my dislike of "Mallrats", "Jersey Girl" and even "Clerks II" (which didn't gel into a cohesive whole for me, although it featured several great individual scenes), I have always liked Kevin Smith as a person, based not only on his podcast and Q&A sessions, but on my one, admittedly short, personal meeting with him. I have also always liked Smith as a writer, and still count "Clerks" as one of the most true-to-life, funniest, and most genuinely inspired screenplays ever written, and all his other movies despite being more flawed in my estimation have something or the other to recommend in them, "Chasing Amy" being his best outside "Clerks". Also influencing my opinion of the film is the fact that if you put Zack in an art-house theater instead of a coffee shop and showed him Robbe-Grillet movies he would basically be me. It also happens that the relationship between Zack and Miri, platonic roommates who have known each other for a long time, is an exact reflection of my own relationship with my roommate. With all that covered, does "Zack and Miri Make a Porno" meet my lofty expectations?

In spite of some forced and unfunny gay and race jokes, it certainly does. I'm almost surprised by it, as I thought there was no way it could meet my expectations. The most instantly noticeable thing about "Zack and Miri Make a Porno" is how good the film looks. Throughout his career Smith has been criticized for his skills as director (or lack thereof), and surprisingly Smith has been one of his biggest critics. On a SModcast episode recently Smith said that he and David Klein (his cinematographer) had really worked hard at making this look like a 'real movie' (perhaps not the exact words, but it was something like that). The effort really has paid off. "Zack and Miri Make a Porno" is a genuinely well-shot film, there's none of the awkwardness and amateurishness of some of Smith's other movies, and if Smith himself says that he thinks of himself as 'not a real film-maker' then he should re-evaluate himself because he has really achieved something quite surprising here.

The screenplay is no disappointment either. In spite of, as I said earlier, some forced and unfunny race and gay humor, "Zack and Miri Make a Porno" still features characters who feel like real people (something Smith has always been able to do) and some really inspired dialogue and even some well-executed sight gags this time around. Oh, it's absolutely filthy, of course, but there's real heart here, and where I personally think "Clerks II" failed at bringing vulgarity and romance together into a cohesive whole, "Zack and Miri Make a Porno" does exactly that, including in the film's key scene between Zack and Miri (which also features a "LOST" joke! Did Kevin Smith make this movie for me?!)

The plot is pretty much what you should expect going in. It's a romantic comedy centered around the making of a porn film to help the two leads get out of a financial crisis. The movie is hardly unpredictable, but it's well-written enough to survive the familiar, conventional outcome. You can't expect something as unconventional as "Chasing Amy" (although this movie might be more consistent and hence better), which was a romantic comedy set in a geek/nerd world, with such accurate reflection of the people I know and the life I live that it remains a favorite of mine in spite of its rough visual look and some bad acting, but "Zack and Miri Make a Porno" is so well-written and contains such genuine emotion that it overcomes all the hurdles which a romantic comedy faces.

The acting is certainly a big part of the movie's success. No offense to Joey Lauren Adams, but Elizabeth Banks has the skill and presence to carry a film like Adams could only hope to, and is a surprisingly great comedienne. Seth Rogen is an affable goofball as he usually is, and Craig Robinson is... Craig Robinson. The two big surprises here are Jason Mewes, who plays a character quite different from Jay very well. There's no real emotional acting for him here, but he's really hilarious and solid here, and Katie Morgan (!), who doesn't have much to do but is a surprisingly decent comedic actress who may actually have a mainstream career in her future.

Some critics have accused "Zack and Miri Make a Porno" of being sappy. I don't know if it's just my being able to identify with Zack so much and my having a Miri of my own, but I felt like the film ended up being genuinely sweet and not sappy. It made me laugh, it nearly made me cry, and it left me feeling very satisfied by the end. Easily Smith's most satisfying movie since "Chasing Amy", possibly since "Clerks", and with the move away from Jersey, away from the View Askewniverse, it sees Kevin Smith maturing as a director and yet still delivering something that's very much a 'Kevin Smith' movie, just a more accomplished version of one. Before this, I thought his horror project "Red State" would be a disaster, after this I'm actually thinking he can pull it off.

8.5/10

It is difficult to imagine a title that will more or less tell you almost everything major that happens in the movie you are about to see than Zack & Miri Make a Porno. The title pretty much sums up the whole film right there, in the broad strokes. But, as with most things, the meat is in the subtext. What the title doesn't tell you is that while making a porno, Zack & Miri, and their other accomplices, will make you laugh pretty hard. Zack & Miri Make a Porno may not be high art, but it is very funny movie, with a touch of heart to go along with it.

Zack (Seth Rogen) and Miri (Elizabeth Banks) have been best friends for as long as they can remember. They live together, but in a completely platonic relationship, drive to work together and both attend their school reunion together. Things are a bit rough for them these days, though: their rather meager jobs are not bringing in enough money to keep the rent paid and all the utilities running. So, after running into an old classmate whose lover is the star of porno films in California, they hit upon a brilliant scheme to make some money: make a porno film.

In short order, they raise some capital from a co-worker (Craig Robinson), recruit a stripper, Stacey (Katie Morgan), Lester (Jason Mewes),a man who isn't afraid to expose himself, a cameraman (Jeff Anderson) and Zack and Miri plan to round out the cast themselves. However, in the process of getting down to business, Zack and Miri are realizing that their long-standing friendship may actually be something more, and can they manage to watch each other get it on with someone else after discovering that they may only want to be with each other.

One thing is certain: if you are not able to listen to frank jokes featuring almost every vulgar word in the English language, not to mention a fair dose of nudity and simulated sex, you should be looking elsewhere for an evening at the movies. Zack & Miri Make a Porno pulls few punches in these categories. If this is not an issue for you, then Zack & Miri will provide a plethora of laughs. As scripted by Kevin Smith, Zack & Miri is one hilarious joke after another, most of which comes from Smith's always impressive ability to weave some terrific conversations full of wit between his various characters. Zack & Miri Make a Porno, like all of Smith's best films, is all about the dialogue, and it works wonderfully, as always.

Seth Rogan is proving to be an actor who manages to give a performance that seems so completely unforced and natural. Zack, like many of Rogan's other roles, is a slice of life guy, and Rogen manages to make it seem like you are just watching a friend that you filmed around the house with a video camera. Elizabeth Banks is equally good in the role of Miri, and the two characters have a nice, natural chemistry, that evokes it's power when the two film their first sex scene for the porno, which Smith stages tastefully and scores with a great, unreleased song by Live. You know you care about what happens to these characters once this scene hits.

The supporting cast is strong, especially Robinson as Zack's co-worker who is principally interested in financing this film so he can see some women naked after being married for so long (A scene between his character and his wife late in the film is a riot) and Jason Mewes, no longer under the influence of drugs, proves that he will do almost anything in a film and gets plenty of laughs.

Zack & Miri Make a Porno is Kevin Smith's second turn at a film outside of his "View Askewniverse" series of films that he kicked off with Clerks, and it shows that Smith has ability to produce a funny film without exclusively relying on his old standby characters. In the process of doing so, he has crafted something that, if you can handle the racy nature of the material, will leave you in stitches.