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Behind the DVD Door of Zack and Miri Make a Porno
by Reg Seeton
 What's more hilarious than Kevin Smith's latest movie finding its way to DVD is some of the responses Zack and Miri Make a Porno has received within the critic community. Rotten Tomatoes has Zack and Miri at an overall average of 65%. You can go there and check it out for yourself but it's clear that some critics are put off by Smith's recipe of the shocking and sweet in Zack and Miri Make a Porno.
I'm not going to spend a paragraph waxing poetically about the plot like every other website. That's what seeing the movie is all about. But for those who don't know, Zack and Miri Make a Porno is not a real porno. However, it is an "R" rated movie that goes the distance in terms of language and nudity. If you get offended by anything close to porn, fake sex, nudity, or the F-word, don't see it. It's not for you. There are porno qualities, sure, but it's nothing to grab a pitchfork, light a torch over, and hunt down Smith like he's the Quasimodo of comedy. Besides, people already tried to do that when he made Dogma and everything turned out fine.
I will say the movie stars Seth Rogen, Elizabeth Banks, Jason Mewes, Craig Robinson of The Office, Jeff Anderson who popularized Randal from Clerks, Ricky Mabe, real life porn star Katie Morgan, and former porn queen Traci Lords, who, collectively, all try to make an amateur porno. Nuff said on that. You can also expect to find cameos by Brian O'Halloran, who played Dante in Clerks, and Justin Long and Brandon Routh who play a hilarious gay couple that Rogen and Banks meet at Zack and Miri's high school reunion. And collectively, they all bring the funny.
 A lot of people have already talked about this since the theatrical release, but there's one sequence in Zack and Miri's porno that gives poor Jeff Anderson and his camera man character the opportunity to steal the movie in a way that Seann William Scott did in American Wedding. Kevin Smith brilliantly sets up the joke but diverts your attention just long enough for a huge cannon splat payoff. You won't even see it coming and it may take the follow up sequence for it to sink in. Just don't have corn for supper before you watch the movie.
On a deeper level, how anyone can laud The 40 Year Old Virgin and Knocked Up yet slam Zack and Miri is proof that what people expect to find in cinematic comedy is much more watered down since the days of Clerks, even decades earlier with movies like Porky's. I mean, 40 Year Old Virgin and Knocked Up were great movies, but Smith's Zack and Miri stands toe-to-toe with both. That's not to say Zack and Miri is perfect, it's not, and it does push the envelope in certain places. There are a few scenes in the final cut that Smith should have excised in favor of any number of the staggering 43 deleted scenes included in the 2-Disc set. But I will say that Zack and Miri won't be popamatic fun for all since the actual making of Zack and Miri's comedic attempt at porn will spell trouble for those that can't take a little more than the average T&A, especially when Smith moves the porn location into a coffee shop where Rogen and Robinson work and the clothes come off.
 Zack and Miri pushes your buttons with the always controversial world of porn but the story unfolds in the same rewarding and romantic manner as Virgin and Knocked Up. Smith, now a father himself, is "somewhat" careful where to go (mainly for MPAA purposes) but he taps into the inner question that some people may not have the balls to admit when they've been down on their luck, desperate for quick cash, and haven't been able to pay the bills - "Why don't we make a porno so we can make a ton of easy money?" Judging by what you can find online nowadays, obviously thousands of people were desperate enough to have asked that very question.
But what I find interesting since the rise of both Judd Apatow and Seth Rogen is that Kevin Smith has sort of taken a back seat to the popularity of Apatow and Rogen. In many ways, Apatow and Rogen have become the new Kevin Smith and Jason Mewes, or the new Kevin Smith and Scott Mosier, whichever way you want to look at it. As Kevin Smith explains in the awesome hour and fifteen minute "Popcorn Porn: Behind the Scenes", he was writing Zack and Miri at the exact same time as all of the Apatow/Rogen movies were becoming huge hits. By the time Superbad rolled into theaters, a new, younger generation hailed Judd Apatow and Seth Rogen as their own kings of comedy while Smith's Zack and Miri could only be perceived as a copycat. And in many ways, the tone of Zack and Miri does feel like 40 Year Old Virgin meets Clerks but in a good way, especially with the appearance of Trinidad born/East Indian comedian Gerry Bednob who plays Rogen and Robinson's boss at a Pittsburgh coffee shop.
 But since some critics are younger than in years past, having also come of age in the past few years with Seth Rogen and Judd Apatow, to some degree it makes me wonder if Zack and Miri falls victim to the new "hot kids on the block". Strangely, and I say this with clenched teeth, for some it may be cooler to like a Judd Apatow/Seth Rogen movie than Kevin Smith and Jason Mewes, which is unfortunate because Zack and Miri brings the funny from start to finish. Smith uses all of the cheesy kitsch of the porn industry to tell a sweet story of two people falling in love.
And big time kudos to Kevin Smith for rolling out Jermaine Stewart! Like I said, and for those into '80s music, he brings the funny from start to finish, literally.
As a DVD, the 2-Disc set is loaded with special features, which include a whopping 43 deleted scenes, a fantastic "Behind the Scenes" segment that's well worth the watch since it breaks down Smith's NC-17 battle with the MPAA and Jeff Anderson's movie stealing sequence, a series of Zack and Miri webisodes, a segment from Smith and the cast from Comic Con 2008 where early footage was screened, and "Outtakes, Ad-libs, and Bloopers" that bring the "human" funny of Smith and the cast. Although a Kevin Smith commentary would have been the best, the set rounds out with an entertaining battle of comedic freestyle between Seth Rogen and Justin Long. The Zack and Miri DVD is time well spent and the perfect compliment to the best comedy of 2008.
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