ZACK AND MIRI MAKE A PORNO – kevin smith – 0.9 / 10

Seth Rogen is a very polarizing ‘star’ in today’s Hollywood. Some see him as a much needed shift away from the bland handsomeness of the Matthew McConagheys and Dylan McDermotts who normally populate romantic comedies; a shift to the sort of everyman that dominated the films of the 1970s when people like Donald Sutherland and Gene Hackman ruled the multiplex. Others think that Rogen, with his ugly mug and beer belly and one trick acting style, always plays the same character to increasingly diminishing returns and should spare us all having to see his face forty feet tall on a theater screen.

Personally I’d always been more in the former camp than the latter. From Freaks and Geeks to Knocked Up and Pineapple Express, I’d found him likeable enough and even though I had to admit that he always played the same character, I didn’t mind spending a few hours with him every once in a while. Maybe it’s overexposure or maybe it’s that Zack and Miri is just terribly written, but whatever the reason, Kevin Smith’s latest has given me a strong push into the latter, Rogen-hating camp. But for right now, I’m going to give Rogen the benefit of the doubt and place the blame for the utter failure of Zack and Miri at the feet of Kevin Smith.

And, boy, does he deserve blame for this piece of dogshit. I’ve heard that Harvey Weinstein (whose eponymous company produced and distributed the film) had hopes of seeing this film clear $80 million. I guess he was drinking the Apatow Kool-Aid because this film would be lucky to gross $25 million.

As it is, this film is a pathetic and transparent attempt by Smith to cash in on the Apatow craze. Not that I’m a particularly large fan of Apatow’s films, with the exception, maybe, of Forgetting Sarah Marshall, but I don’t think the success of his films owes simply to the fact that they are romantic comedies in gross out disguise. I prefer not to delve too deeply into the Apatow oeuvre and attempt to dissect just what has made them so popular. But if I was going to try and piggyback on his success, I sure as hell would study those films as closely as Shakespearean scholars study the sonnets.

But Smith hasn’t given the Apatow canon even a cursory examination. It’s as if he just figured that his sensibility and Apatow’s were similar enough that he could just borrow a couple of Apatow’s regular players, drop them into his standard plot and assume that audiences would flock. But something is off about Zack and Miri. Despite being occasionally amusing (and often disgusting) and completely conservative in its message (just like Apatow's films), the film just isn’t very much fun. Quite the opposite in fact. And I’m not about to spend any more brainpower and time trying to figure out why it’s such a failure.