Zack and Miri Make A Porno (Elizabeth Banks, Seth Rogan) – I will see any movie with Elizabeth Banks in it. Ever since she played much older than her age in Seabiscuit, she has shown a great screen presence and a broad range. This University of Pennsylvania magna cum laude graduate also attended the Advanced Training Program at the prestigious American Conservatory Theater in San Francisco before landing parts in Hollywood. To many, her first visible role was in Spiderman and then Steven Spielberg’s Catch Me If You Can. But why she does youth-aimed dirty pleasure comedies like The 40-Year-Old Virgin and Zack and Miri Make a Porno is beyond me, especially now that’s she’s in her mid-30s. She is way too talented for this and, as such, it could cheapen her serious image. Of course, she is appearing right now as Laura Bush in W. so at least Oliver Stone didn’t care. Now to the film.
Director Kevin Smith does grunge comedies without being part of the Judd Apatow family. So does Seth Rogan, but he is a card-carrying member of the Apatow troupe. It isn’t that Rogan isn’t talented; he is. But he is typecasting himself and will have a screen life only as long as the audience remains for comedies short on plot and high on nudity, drugs, and gross scenes. Zack and Miri has lots of nudity, boasts some former and present porn stars, and includes enough gross-out visual scenes to turn a stomach or two.
From this description, you would logically conclude that I didn’t like this movie. But I (kind of) did. It was funny. It was a sort of love story about two friends since grade school who live together as friends but don’t think of themselves as in love. Think Will and Grace without the gay theme. The two live in squalor. She works in the mall; he works at a Starbuck’s knock-off. When their utilities are turned off, they resort to a get-rich-quick scheme – making a porno flick where they, among others, have sex on film. They put together a rag-tag team of lovable unlovables and set out to make the movie. Set in the very suburb of Pittsburgh where I grew up and shot in The Steel City (including at the Monroeville Mall where I worked in high school), the story moves fast and dirty. It was originally given the dreaded NC-17 rating but director Smith appealed and got an R instead. The voyeurs among you will like this (almost the only people you don’t see nude are Rogan and Banks), as will the aficionados of grunge comedies. But mom, I don’t think you will.