Kevin Smith's hardcore rom-com has a soft, likeable core, writes Michael Dwyer
THE FIRST four-letter expletive is uttered within the first minute of Zack and Miri Make a Porno. Hundreds more will follow over the next 100 minutes, along with racist epithets and other gleefully politically incorrect references, and scenes of frontal nudity and simulated sex.
None of this should come as much of a surprise to anyone familiar with the avidly provocative movies ( Dogma, Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back, Chasing Amy) written and directed by Kevin Smith, who revels in pushing the boundaries of mainstream cinema.
Unlikely as it may seem given all its candour and smuttiness, Smith's new film is a romantic comedy. It posits a question quite unfamiliar from that genre: Can two platonic friends since high school days find true love when they co-star in a porn picture?
Seth Rogen and Elizabeth Banks co-star as Zack and Miri, who share a rundown apartment in grim, wintry Pittsburgh. Around Thanksgiving, they attend a school reunion, although they are reluctant to go because they're broke and embarrassed to be regarded as under-achievers by former classmates.
Arriving there, Miri is excited to meet the school's handsome former football hero ( Superman Returnsstar Brandon Routh), the subject of an unconsummated crush in her teens. To her dismay, Miri discovers that he's now in a passionate relationship with another man, an actor played by an unusually deep-voiced Justin Long. When the actor says that he performs in movies with all-male casts, Zack naively asks, "Like Glengarry Glen Ross?"
In desperation to meet their mounting bills, Zack and Miri decide to make their own porn picture. The unprepossessing location for this tacky, no-budget movie is the Bean N Gone coffee shop where Zak ekes a meager income. The consequences include Miri's suggestion of An American Werewolf in Brendaas a title, a radical reworking of Star Warsas Star Whores, a perfect parody of woodenly acted porn scenarios, unexpected YouTube captures, and outrageous visual gags involving soap bubbles and constipation - separately, that is.
The movie's admirably deadpan cast injects this yarn with an infectious sense of fun. As in Knocked Up, Rogen is comfortably cast as an overweight slacker thrown together with a much more attractive woman. She is played with panache by Banks in a role that contrasts sharply with her portrayal of the US president's wife Laura Bush in W. There is an easy chemistry between the two actors that proves unexpectedly appealing.
Craig Robinson (from the US TV version of The Office) is entertaining as Zack's married co-worker who relishes his role as the movie's producer and casting director. Jason Mewes, a regular in Smith's films, is uninhibited as an eagerly priapic participant in the porn picture. And Traci Lords and Katie Morgan, both veterans of X-rated movies, add a certain authenticity to the proceedings.
Although much of the humour is calculatedly crude and cheerfully vulgar, Smith's movie is, at its core, a sweet-natured romance. It even closes on a chaste exhortation when Jermaine Stewart sings You Don't Have to Take Your Clothes Off (To Have a Good Time).
