Bow-Chicka-Bow-Wow

This afternoon, I saw Kevin Smith's newest movie, Zack and Miri Make a Porno. It used to be that I generally enjoyed Kevin Smith movies, but didn't think he wqas fantastic or anything. But I was very pleasantly surprised by his last effort, Clerks II, and I think that raised my expectations for this movie. In some ways, this movie was better. In other ways, it was not as good.

Let's start with the "better." This movie is damn funny; I'd say his funniest movie yet. Assuming your threshold for raunch is sufficiently high, you'll get your money's worth out of this movie.

You could actually even watch just 5 minutes of this movie and get your money's worth: the 5 minutes featuring Justin Long. (For those of you who don't know him by name, he's a "Mac" in the commercials.) Take all the funny of his performances in Galaxy Quest, Dodgeball, and his cameo in Walk Hard, and compress it all down in a five minute period, and you've got his role in Zack and Miri Make a Porno. There's a risk I've just totally oversold this, but I don't think so. It'll live up to my hype; he's that funny in this movie.

And while that might be the highlight of the movie, the rest really does deliver too. It brings more than mere smiles or snickers. I laughed out loud a lot throughout this movie, as did the entire group I went with.

On the down side, the thing that made Clerks II a better movie in my mind, compared to earlier Kevin Smith movies, was that it had a message. I don't believe all movies have to have one, and certainly not comedies, but the fact that Clerks II did (and one so deftly slipped in amongst all the raunch jokes) was really cool to me. It showed a more mature kind of movie making, despite all the surrounding immaturity.

No such luck for Zack and Miri. Oh, it has a plot, to be sure. And it is sweet at times. But ultimately it's a pretty conventional tale of friends at a moment of discovery and change -- are they meant to be more than friends? That's not really making any kind of "statement," if you ask me.

Still, you might well argue that a movie like this should be funny first, and anything else second. Well, it is funny, and so deserves a good mark. I just don't happen to hold it in quite as high regard as Clerks II. And as I gave that film a B+, I think that means Zack and Miri Make a Porno gets a B from me.