Ever since he pawned his comic-book collection to finance Clerks, Kevin Smith has been cultivating his fan base like an organic farmer spreading manure. He knows what they expect out of him - potty-mouth sexual humor with a slight skateboard-punk edge. And in his own limited way, he knows how to deliver. I've never been what you'd call a big fan - didn't like Clerks, hated Mallrats, resented Chasing Amy (lesbian goes bi for handsome straight guy) and thought Dogma set anti-Catholicism back a good thousand years. Actually, the only movie of Smith's I've liked was Jersey Girl, which everybody else hated. Yes, it was sentimental, even sappy, but at least there was some genuine emotion, not just Degeneration X attitudinizing.
Heading toward 40, Smith must wonder how to keep his pact with his fans while no longer acting like a complete juvenile. One answer came with Clerks II, where he returned to his old stomping grounds in New Jersey and showed us that everyone, even a Slurpee jerk, eventually moves on. And another answer comes with Zack and Miri Make a Porno, where Smith merges the two sides of his artistic temperament, puts the "sin" back in "sincere." Setting a sex farce in the pimply-butt world of amateur porn is a fertile enough idea, but throwing a Harry-met-Sally romantic comedy into the mix seems downright revolutionary. Zack and Miri Make a Porno is as smutty as anything Smith's ever done, and that's saying something, but there's also an innocence that takes the sting out of all the f-words and c-words, d-words and p-words.
Seth Rogen and Elizabeth Banks are Zack and Miri, who've known each other since first grade without ever hooking up, for some reason. You'd think it might have something to do with the fact that Zack looks and sounds like Fozzie Bear while Banks looks and sounds like an up-and-coming Hollywood star, but that doesn't seem to have occurred to Smith. So Rogen is allowed to continue his run as one of the least likely leading men of all time. And he is charming here, in a trash-talking sock-puppet kind of way. Banks, of course, is loaded down with charm, but she somehow convinces us that Miri might actually go along with Zack's idea of shooting a homemade porno movie to pay off their debts. Which means that sets have to be built, costumes have to be sewn, lube has to be acquired - hey, kids, let's put on a show!
Both the show and the show-outside-the-show - i.e., the movie - are put together in slapdash fashion, the former humorously so, the latter not so much. What can I say, I just don't connect with Smith's sense of humor. He tends to overwrite funny lines, let them go on a beat or two too long. And when he doesn't do that, he relies too much on raunch to carry the day. "I think I burnt my ball hair off," Zack wails early on. (Noël Coward, eat your heart out.) But Smith has a way of throwing so much raunch at you that you finally surrender, bare your funny bone. Which is what made me so susceptible to Craig Robinson, from The Office, who plays the guy who bankrolls the whole operation. Robinson's deadpan delivery could stop a bullet in its path.
By the way, stay through the end credits if you still haven't had enough.
