Concerned about their mounting bills, platonic roommates Zack (Seth Rogen) and Miri (Elizabeth Banks) decide to make a porn movie, only to find that it leads to shifts in their relationship.

CRITIQUE

Zack and Miri Make a Porno is very much a Kevin Smith movie; the writer/director throws in a lot of his usual elements – a talk-heavy script, a lot of raunchy playfulness, characters toiling at jobs they don’t like, and even some of his familiar actors in Jason Mewes and Jeff Anderson.  But the result is a mixed bag; though there are some funny sequences here, most of them are early, and ultimately this is just okay.

For the first half-hour, this is actually very funny stuff, as we meet Zack and Miri and follow them to their 10th anniversary class reunion.  Smith mines a lot of funny stuff from this sequence, particularly in the specter of a gay classmate and his porn star boyfriend (Justin Long), who help add some dirty humor to the open going.  Seth Rogen is very much in his element as the slobby Zack, while Elizabeth Banks is very funny and appealing as the slightly-slutty Miri.

But once they start tackling the porn movie, things fall off the rails a bit.  Smith falls into the trap of turning it into a movie about Zack and Miri realizing that they love each other, and that they don’t want to have sex with other people, but this is all rather toothless and predictable, and really doesn’t feed what should have been a more anarchic comedy.

It just feels like there could have been a very funny-raunchy film here, in the specter of characters uncomfortable in this world trying to pull off a porn movie, and everything that goes wrong along the way.  But the basic elements of this aren’t even set up well; the main characters have a familiarity and comfort with sex, so they never feel like there are in a world they are freaked out by, while there just isn’t much that is hilarious that happens in the porn filming sequences.  It never even seems like the movie they are making is even particularly clever, sexy or entertaining.

Still, there are laughs here, and overall this is okay.  Porn stars Tracy Lords and Katie Morgan show up in major roles to help add some authenticity to it all, Craig Robinson (The Office) has some funny moments, and Jason Mewes even gets to play a character that is (sort of) different from Jay, the guy he usually plays in Smith’s movies.  Ultimately there are things to like here, though one is left wishing that it had more-aggressively gone for the laughs overall.

THE VIDEO

Zack and Miri Make a Porno is presented in a matted widescreen format, enhanced for widescreen TVs.  The picture quality is generally good.

THE AUDIO

Zack and Miri Make a Porno is presented in English Dolby Stereo.  Dialogue, music and sound effects come through clear.  There are English subtitles.

THE EXTRAS

There are 94 minutes of Deleted and Extended Scenes, though since much is made up of longer cuts of scenes in the movie, a lot of this is made up of shots already in the film.  Still, there is a lot of material here that was just cut for time, and some of it is funny.

The 75-minute Popcorn Porn: The Making of Zack and Miri is exactly what making-of documentaries should be, filled with interviews from Smith and the cast as they trace the making of the movie from its inspiration, to its casting, to the shooting (and the development of the “poop cannon”) to  Smith’s fight to get it an R rating.  Good stuff.

There are 47 minutes of Money Shots Webisodes that are sort of a mixed bag, though there is a laugh or two.

There is a 23 minute clip of Smith and some of the other cast members on a panel fielding questions at Comic-Con 2008.

Out-Takes, Ad-Libs and Bloopers is 13 minutes of improvised bits and characters laughing, that drags on a bit too long.

Seth Vs. Justin: Battle For Improvisational Supremacy is 7 minutes of Rogen and Long improvising off each other during the class reunion scene.

FINAL THOUGHT

A raunchy comedy that has laughs, though it could have been better.