RATING:

It occurs to me that there may be one perfect audience member for a Kevin Smith film and that person is. . . Kevin Smith. Who else besides Smith would have such a taste for extreme raunch and mushy, chick-flick style romance?
But Smith’s cinematic schizophrenia may actually work to his advantage. You see, he’s not the best director of romantic comedies (although Chasing Amy had a certain shaggy charm) and he’s certainly not the best director at raunch (he tends to go too far, and isn’t quite funny enough to get away with it). But put the two sides of Smith together and you’ve got something resembling a good movie.
Which leads us to Zack and Miri Make a Porno. The title gets points for literal-mindedness (although it loses points for accessibility—when I review it on WBAL, I’ll be shortening it to the more kid-friendly Zack and Miri).
Zack (Seth Rogen) and Miri (Elizabeth Banks) are best friends and roommates—no nookie—and they’re positively broke. So they get the bright idea to make a porno film and they enlist a group of cheerful exhibitionists to help them. The catch? They’ve written in a sex scene for each other and they fear it will ruin their friendship.
Did I mention the film is raunchy? There’s a whole lot of simulated sex and nudity (although the supporting cast—including former porn star Traci Lords and Smith regular Jason Mewes—do most of the heavy lifting.) And there is one scene so vile and disgusting it had my audience gasping with horror. (Ah, I just sold a few extra tickets. You’re welcome, Kevin Smith.) Some of this stuff is funny, mostly it’s just lewd.
The Office’s Craig Robinson is a welcome presence as Zack’s buddy who helps out with the film because he’s married and simply wants to see some bare breasts. (He phrases it more colorfully.) But the film belongs to Rogen and Banks, who work together quite well, and manage to evoke some real tenderness amid all the perversity. (The critic David Edelstein argued, heroically, that Banks was too hot for Rogen. But I kind of get the Rogen thing. Just as Gloria was too hot for Meathead, but we never questioned their love—that’s an All in the Family reference, for the Nick At Nite impaired—so it goes with the cuddly Zack.)
I’m still not totally sure who Smith’s audience is. Fans of the raunchy part will find the love story part too hokey, and fans of the love story will be turned off by the gleeful debauchery. But everyone will be moderately satisfied with what they’ve just seen. That’s sort of like pleasing all of the people, right?