Zack and Miri Make a Porno

Zack and Miri Make a Porno

Directed by Kevin Smith

(R)

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To pay the rent, roommates make a pornographic film.

Zack and Miri Make a Porno isn’t “quite as raunchy as its title makes it sound,” said Stephanie Zacharek in Salon.com. Two roommates, played by Seth Rogen and Elizabeth Banks, resort to making a skin flick when they can’t pay their bills. Writer-director Kevin Smith has made a career out of dirty jokes and puerile antics, and he knows a “crude joke will always get a laugh from someone.” Still, he stuffs Zack and Miri with so many that the gags seem “forced, almost mechanical, in their crudeness.” Smith clearly doesn’t know when to stop, said Kyle Smith in the New York Post. But at least the “limitless raunch” gives life to the film’s rather limp story line. Slowly, it dawns on you that this is Smith’s gutter-brained take on the timeworn discussion of whether sex ruins friendship. Call it “When Harry Did Sally.” Smith strives for that “dirty-mind/soft-heart combination” that marked films such as Clerks, said A.O. Scott in The New York Times. But even his “avalanche of verbal filth” can’t obscure the fact that Zack and Miri has a plot as moronic as that of most pornos.