I gave Zack and Miri a shot solely due to Seth Rogen, who along with Judd Apatow, revamped the guys-with-feelings genre (a.k.a. the bromantic comedy) into something slightly less naive than Smith's schlock. Where Apatow's guys are just dumb (and stoned) lovable losers, Smith's guys are socially inept and pugnacious when it comes to Star Wars or anything nerdy. Zack and Miri Make a Porno sounded like something Judd Apatow made, especially once I saw Rogen's bearded mug on the poster. I was intrigued, but Kevin Smith likes to shit on good ideas (remember Dogma? Come on, it was a good idea...).
So anyhow, meet Zack and Miri: heterosexual "platonic" roommates who walk in on each other taking shits (commencing bad dialogue before anyone thinks or mentions to close the door). Some foul-mouthed perverts - err, scratch foul-mouthed. Everyone in Smith's movies have unnecessarily foul mouths... Some perverts shoot a video on their phone of Miri changing clothes, exposing her granny panties (FUCKING HYSTERICAL, RIGHT???!!!) before Rogen interrupts the video with his bare (and presumably shaved) ass. Said video goes on the internet, and Ms. Granny Panties is famous. Famous enough, at least, for Zack to suggest making a porno on the heels of her Granny Panty fame so they can pay their rent and utilities (they thought of other solutions, but the porno turned out to be the most logical.). "Hilarity" ensues. Oh, then they fall in love after they already had known each other for 20 years, 'cause this is the dumbest movie ever.
It woulda taken me all day to watch this movie, take notes, and assail it as hard as it deserves. And ya know, fuck that. So let's test my dubious memory here, and I'm sure one of my millions of readers can do the proper fact-checking, so here goes...
Now, I like women, actually, as they are. Make no mistake - I like their hair, smell, boobs, butts and va-jay-jays and I like talking about those things, too. But aside from that, I like women as human beings who have helped me grow as a person more than a lot of my guy friends have over the years, just by taking the time to impart their wisdom onto me. Ya know, to name one thing. Kevin Smith and Co. made it clear that the boobs, butts and va-jay-jays outweigh the importance of treating women like human beings in his movies. To illustrate this (skip this part, fact-checkers - I just reviewed this monologue to quote perfectly), when Zack professed his love to Miri, it went a little something like this:
"Ya know what? If you were any other bitch I didn't give a rat's ass about I would tell you to go FUCK yourself right now because I, fuckin, HATE, this game-playing SHIT, but you mean more to me than that...We tried to fuck, and instead, we wound up making love. So if this is what you need to hear in order to keep you from fucking Lester, if this is what you need, then fine. Here it is. I'm gonna say it. [Pause] I love you, Miri. [Pause] Happy?"How sweet. But why was he so upset? Oh, right. After they had sex and they both 'felt' love and not just fucking, Miri 'tested' Zack by allowing him the opportunity to sleep with one of their porn star costars. Prolly to see if Zack had 'felt' it, too. No matter though. According to Smith, who thinks his men are like every man, it's all a fucking bullshit game chicks play to fuck with us and they're fucking bitches for it. Well, at the very least, they're evil women for the sake of being evil. No real motive or anything. Just evil. And in Kevin Smith's world, resolving such evil requires the woman to stop being such a fucking bitch, then see how sensitive and hurt the guy really is (in spite of his bitch-hating exterior), and finally laud the embarrassment of a man that he is.
Now, compare this Rogen with Apatow's Rogen in, say, Knocked-Up. For starters, he was likable. Also, he acknowledged how ridiculously out of his league Katherine Heigl was (Miri? Elizabeth Banks? Also ridiculously out of his league, but you'd never guess it in Zack and Miri if you were blind.). In Knocked Up, he was still a loser, but he tried to stop being a loser.
Loser-hood was a-okay for both Zack and Miri. And I'd like to tell you Miri could do better, but Smith really didn't tell me enough about Miri to judge. Just: her flashing smiles, saying the word fuck, acting in a porno, not really having an option to fuck anyone but Zack despite being single and in a fucking porno (she pines for him!), and making earth-shaking love atop a bag of coffee beans in front of a camera crew. Ya know. Just like real a woman would. (Bitch? Ugh. I'm confusing myself with all this casual misogyny...)
Aside from my issues with how Smith depicted genders, his movie plain sucked my balls. He fought with the MPAA to get an R-rating instead of NC-17 for Zack and Miri, and a movie called Zack and Miri Make a Porno had controversy written all over it. In fact, the poster with Rogen's bearded mug was banned in the U.S. (look at the head at the bottom facing the crotch implying *gasp* ORAL SEX!), replaced by a stick-figure-drawing-poster claiming the movie was too 'titillating' to show any other image. But this movie was tame - might have raised an eyebrow ten years ago (when people still gave a fuck about Kevin Smith). Let's see... saw some silicone boobs, a quick flash of some chick's beav, uhh... granny panties, fuckin.... dudes' asses and Jason Mewes's (Jay as in Jay & Silent Bob ) dong. Uhh... handful of pelvic thrusts, ya know... nothing I haven't seen in R-rated movies many times before (save Jay's dong). Oh! There was the one gross part where a dude had diarrhea sprayed all over his face...
Now that was gross, but little else. It didn't make any sense. This siliconed Stacey gal told Zack she'd been really constipated, but anal sex opened her right up, as it were. So - where does diarrhea enter this equation? Oh, right. It doesn't. And it prolly woulda been funnier if the dude filming the anal scene from the floor up toward the gyrating crotches had a giant turd just bounce off his face after the guy pulled out from the anal...love-ma...fucking? Sex?
You mean, coitus?
So like the rest of Zack and Miri, this scene was adolescent, pointless, not well conceived, and not rooted in reality. Kevin Smith: washed up shock jockey who offends others - or tries to, anyway - for the sake of offending others. Like I said - I'm way more mature than Kevin Smith. Fuck that guy.
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