BOOKS AND ARTS OCTOBER 31, 2008
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With 1990s films such as Clerks and Chasing Amy, Kevin Smith pioneered the kind of tender raunch that, under Judd Apatow, has come to dominate American comedy. As Apatow himself once put it, “Kevin Smith laid down the track.” Now, though, the train has left the station and, like everyone else, Smith is desperately trying to climb back aboard. Indeed, there is perhaps no greater testament to Apatow’s cultural hegemony than the fact that even the isolated comedies released these days that he neither produced, co-wrote, nor directed strive so mightily to look as if he did.
The latest Apatowannabe is Smith’s Zack and Miri Make a Porno, a movie whose plot is summed up pretty comprehensively in its six-word title. Their water and electricity cut off in the midst of a chilly Pittsburgh winter, best-friend roommates Zack (Apatow regular Seth Rogen) and Miri (Elizabeth Banks) adopt the amateur adult route to paying their bills. They assemble a motley cast (including Smith veteran Jason Mewes and porn veteran Traci Lords). They agree to have sex on camera. And they agree they won’t let it alter their friendship. Only one of the two agreements is kept.
This skeletal narrative is, of course, primarily an excuse for 100 minutes of sex jokes. Some are pretty funny: an early riff on masturbation accessories; a cameo by an unsettlingly baritone Justin Long as a gay porn star; a Mewes demonstration of the “double Dutch rudder.” (Don’t ask unless you’re certain you want to know.) Most of the jokes, however, are not--and are risqué only by the most adolescent standard: the revelation of how “Bubbles” (Lords) got her nickname (shades of the original Emmanuelle, for anyone who remembers that far back); the strap-on-assisted role reversal of male and female pornsters; the discussion, and later demonstration, of anal sex as a remedy for constipation. After much debate over what they should title their sci-fi porn epic, Zack and Miri have their eureka moment with “Star Whores,” a pun so original that a google search clocks in at over 60,000 unrelated hits, including at least two pre-existing erotic films.
As befits the cinematic zeitgeist, this is all intended to have a sweet smuttiness, the touching story of two friends who only come to realize they are in love with one another the moment they have sex in front of a camera, and their friends, for money. This tender tale, sadly, is even more half-hearted--quarter-hearted perhaps?--than the dirty jokes that adorn it. Zack and Miri’s relationship unfolds with all the subtlety of a flow chart--the nervous anticipation of their erotic endeavor, the fraught negotiations over who will sleep with whom in the film, the revelatory roll in the hay, the subsequent jealousies, etc. The bids at emotional truth ring so hollow they make you wish Smith had stuck to filthy farce.
There’s a hasty, half-finished quality to the whole enterprise, as if it was thrown together with as little care as “Star Whores.” When, for instance, Seth watches the video of his carnal encounter with Miri, the footage is shot from a wildly different angle than the one we watched it being shot from. (A warning for the prurient: Both are entirely tame. For all its advertised daring, Zack and Miri exposes its stars far less than the Apatow-produced Forgetting Sarah Marshall.)
And though it is a tiresome necessity, it does bear mentioning that the pairing of Rogen and Banks in a (theoretically) sexy comedy is wildly out of balance, and not merely in terms of literal body mass. In Rogen’s last such mismatched romance, with the comely Katherine Heigl in Apatow’s Knocked Up, the obvious disparity in physical attractiveness was at least clearly acknowledged. Here, though, writer-director Smith seems intent on forcing it to go the other way altogether. Banks is a pretty enough actress that Smith’s decision to saddle her character with sexual desperation and hopelessness seems not only ridiculous but vaguely mean-spirited. So, too, the look of pure religious ecstasy she wears after her coupling with Rogen, and the tear-stained joy with which she welcomes him back near the end of the film. These are a man’s idea of what a woman in love is supposed to look like. (Rogen, by contrast, is allowed to enjoy his excellent fortune with characteristically wry good cheer.)
Kevin Smith may have begat Judd Apatow. But where Apatow has found ways, at least intermittently, to mine deeper emotions in his movies, Smith doesn’t offer much beyond a parade of off-color jokes that no longer seem even slightly provocative. It’s one thing for a movie to be dirty; it’s another thing altogether for it to be plain sloppy.
Christopher Orr is a senior editor at The New Republic.
By Christopher Orr
11 comments
Haven't seen the film, but I have seen the "red band" trailer, and there is one great moment, when Seth Rogen and Justin Long meet at their high-school reunion and Long explains he makes films with "all-male" casts. Rogen asks "Like GLENGARRY GLEN ROSS?" and gets a porn-movie title in response." "So--it that like, a sequel?"
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October 31, 2008 at 12:27pm
Thanks for the heads-up, however, I take issue with your comment about disparities in attractiveness and the unlikeliness of the female character's being sexually desperate. It is quite common that men who are not particularly physically attractive have pretty wives. These men often have other good qualities - intelligence, sense of humor, money, etc. Further, there are certainly many many beautiful women out there who are sexually desperate. The fact that one might be able to pick up any number of idiots in a bar doesn't mean that one does so. Also, I think you mean "may have begotten"?
- kkksss
October 31, 2008 at 1:12pm
Smith is a no-talent hack. Always has been and always will be.
- EM
October 31, 2008 at 4:25pm
I'm sick of this "Zeitgeist."
- jhildner
October 31, 2008 at 7:07pm
It seems really unfair to Apatow to imply that he's Smith's heir in any sense. Apatow is better than Smith at absolutely every aspect of filmmaking . . . and I simply doubt that The 40-Year-Old Virgin and Knocked Up would never have been made if not for mediocrities (to put it very generously) like Chasing Amy and Clerks. Smith's only talent is for self-promotion. He learned early in his career how effective the Internet was for building up a fiercely loyal base of fans who perceive Smith less as a filmmaker than a friend. Harry Knowles, of Ain't It Cool News, is a similar "success story." In spite of the fact that he can't write or edit, can't design a simple web page or, apparently, hire others who can design a page . . . and in spite of the fact that he gives positive reviews to pretty much every film he sees (often in an implicit exchange for access to famous people) . . . he's become an institution because of his connections with his readers and the influential friends whom he flatters shamelessly. That Apatow is kissing Smith's ass is really depressing. It's also depressing that Chris Orr, who should know better, is crediting Smith with starting the comedy revival that Apatow is leading. And by the way, Knocked Up was not the most recent Rogen romantic mismatch; in the more-recent Pineapple Express, he was the boyfriend of a drop-dead-gorgeous 18-year-old.
- MMG
October 31, 2008 at 8:48pm
Just got back from a movie that is probably better than Orr would have you believe. It's the best Kevin Smith movie since Chasing Amy. Easily as good as Clerks II. That said, you should stay in your seat once the credits roll (after an admittedly halting "ending") for the final two minute coda about 2.5 minutes into the credits. It's not Sam Jackson appearing at the end of Iron Man, but it'll probably be more satisfying than if you just leave when the film's over.
- kerouac9
November 2, 2008 at 12:58am
Another tiresome, redundant use of male frontal nudity. The double standard against men continues. I hope that young men will soon realize that they are being had and refuse to see shows that do not include an equal amount of female frontal nudity. It is about respect and equality.
- Tim1974
November 3, 2008 at 9:29pm
Anyone who managed to sit through the stultifying collection of uninspired outtakes that was "Clerks 2" will no doubt be unsurprised to learn that not only has Mr. Smith jumped the shark, but he has had it cleaned, stuffed, and mounted into the bargain. These 90-minute commercials for his gimcrack t-shirt stores have become increasingly tedious, but this will matter little to the overweight band that considers Smith's bowel movements holy writ.
- Count Screwloose
November 6, 2008 at 3:37am
I am a huge Kevin Smith fan. Clerks, Chasing Amy and Clerks II contained great writing and some comedic genius. This being said, Zack and Miri was awful. To say that I was disappointed was an enormous understatement. Kevin Smith - a talented writer of dialogue - chose vulgarity over cleverness this time around. Don't get me wrong. Anyone who loves Kevin Smith movies doesn't mind vulgarity - I certainly do not. However, once you get past the shock value of what is being said and think about the actual dialogue, you have two thoughts: (a) no one I know talks like that and (b)the banter is not necessarily funny. In past films, the vulgarity of the dialogue was funny and believable. Here, it was tired and worn. Also, the story seemed pretty half-baked. Sure, the initial concept was original. But the storytelling was not entirely believable and the ending was way too predictable. Once the two agreed to make the porno, you knew exactly what was going to happen. Snoozville. Finally, no way Elizabeth Banks has difficulty finding a boyfriend and eventually falls for a guy that looks like Seth... I mean, I get how they are best friends and the act of sex draws them closer, but there is something in real life that we call "physical attraction".
- Mark Green
November 7, 2008 at 11:55am
"Another tiresome, redundant use of male frontal nudity. The double standard against men continues. I hope that young men will soon realize that they are being had and refuse to see shows that do not include an equal amount of female frontal nudity. It is about respect and equality." No offense dude, but there was full frontal female nudity as well....
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November 7, 2008 at 11:56am
For what it's worth, i've seen better films, I've seen worse films. I do have a gripe with this bit of the review: "There's a hasty, half-finished quality to the whole enterprise... for instance, Seth watches the video of his carnal encounter with Miri, the footage is shot from a wildly different angle than the one we watched it being shot from." You'll notice in that scene when Zack is watching his "Carnal encounter," the medium shots of Zack standing in the foreground with the monitor in the background always show the actual footage of the porno itself, where the crew was watching from in the corner. Only when we were seeing the film from ZACK'S POV did we see those very intimate, close-up shots that were shown and experienced earlier in the film. I thought this was a very nice touch, because it said to me that Zack was not seeing the horrible ACTUAL footage of him and Miri on those bags of beans, recorded by Zack's ragtag film crew in the corner of the coffee shop, but rather was in fact re-living the actual experience (which is what the audience did earlier in the film when Zack' and Miri's scene was shot, as the camera perspective switched from handi-cam to film once they "connected." I felt this was a gross oversight and a bad example in this review. There may be "a hasty, half-finished quality to the whole enterprise" of the film, but what a poor example, only illustrating that reviewer himself did not "get it."
- KajusX
November 8, 2008 at 10:56pm