Welcome to Rearview Mirror, a monthly column in which I re-view and then re-review a movie I have already seen under the new (and improved?) critical lens of 2023. I’m so happy you’re here.
The problem isn’t that Zack and Miri Make a Porno is bad. It’s not bad, exactly. It’s predictable and a little boring. In some places, mildly offensive. But no, not a terrible, worthless, hideous piece of filmmaking. It just could have been so much better.
Zack (Seth Rogen) and Miri (Elizabeth Banks), best friends who have never slept together—because don’t worry about it, the script doesn’t explain, who cares—can’t pay their bills with their dead-end jobs, and after seeing a former classmate (Justin Long) at their high school reunion who got rich from the porn biz, they decide to take a whack at it. They are encouraged in this endeavor by the fact that Miri has been the unwitting star of a viral (and honestly quite chaste) video about her “granny panties,” and they recruit an ensemble of, uh, quirky sex-positive fellow Canucks to help them. Along the way they realize they’re in love, and that friendship is actually more valuable than money…when their friends give them money!
At first it’s going to be a porn parody of Star Wars, then it’s a coffee-themed bang-a-thon filmed at the café where Zack is a barista. The titular porno never comes out, and it doesn’t really matter because by the time we get to the end, Rogen has said “suck” a lot, which I believe was the genesis of the whole enterprise. Here’s some other stuff that happens: A constipated woman does anal and poops all over the cameraman; Brandon Routh and Justin Long really, really lean into “playing gay,” the R-slur is used a number of times (yet only once in the theatrical trailer); Craig Robinson does his level best to bring some edge to the, uh, racial scenes; a woman called “Bubbles” blows bubbles with her vag. There is much talk of butts.
For a movie about how cool it is to work in porn, Zack and Miri Make a Porno is surprisingly and disappointingly conservative in what it actually explores. Like, if you went from being a regular-degular person to porn star overnight, might you not…wax? Stretch? Watch some Xtube for inspiration? But the realities of the human body are, bizarrely, not mined for comedy at all. There’s not a single same-sex kiss (or same-sex anything else), no three-way, no interesting positions (seriously, I don’t think anyone even cowgirls!). Both Zack and Miri are devastated to think the other might have slept with someone else, then thrilled to learn that they’ve both been faithful, even before they’re in a relationship. It’s a weird dichotomy—is sex meaningful or not?—and the script does nothing with it.
The titular porno never comes out, and it doesn’t really matter because by the time we get to the end, Rogen has said “suck” a lot, which I believe was the genesis of the whole enterprise.
Which is a shame, because this is the first draft of a good, solid Apatow-core movie. Obviously, I have notes: Let’s give the gang a better reason for choosing porn than “it was an idea” and “we need money.” Let’s have all of our characters know each other before the action starts so that not only Zack and Miri have tension and baggage, but there can be a B- and C-story, too. Just off the top of my head, let’s say Zack is a film nerd who’s spent his last penny trying to finance a Star Wars homage, but when his girlfriend (who’s also his lead actress) dumps him and moves to Hollywood, she takes the funding with her. Desperate, Zack takes the only possessions—sets and costumes—and skills—shooting and editing—he has and makes a porn version of his movie with his female frenemy in the lead role, and watching her do a bunch of stuff with other people’s dicks makes him realize how great she is, and not in a possessive “my dick first and foremost!” type of way. Meanwhile, another member of the cast comes to terms with his sexuality and rejects his conformist religious upbringing while the biggest slut of all is, twist, a virgin! That could work, right?
But this isn’t an Apatow first draft, this is a Kevin Smith final project, with all the apathy that entails. Dialogue like, “Zack, if you don’t get an advance on your salary, we won’t make our rent!” And oh yeah, did I mention a plot point is that a moderately scandalous video inexplicably goes viral? I hate that as a device. Hate, hate, hate, hate, hate.
Which brings me to…they really focus on the need to have a professional shoot their scenes when we’ve seen that even in 2008 people are sharing viral videos on their iPhones, so like, huh?
For a movie about how cool it is to work in porn, Zack and Miri Make a Porno is surprisingly and disappointingly conservative in what it actually explores.
But the real reason you couldn’t—say it with me, folks—make this nowadays is, of course, OnlyFans. Amateur adult content, and sex work in general, is neither as inaccessible nor as lucrative as it once was. In fact, the jig might have even been up shortly after Zack and Miri hit theaters (to be honest, I don’t know that much about the business side of porn). One of the running gags in the movie is that the ditzy blonde with big boobs has a tiny dog, a joke that was stale even when it was relevant, in 2003.
During one early scene, when Zack gets the idea to make a porno, we get his POV on Miri, and she’s all done-up with neon lights around her, seductively licking a beer bottle or something. It’s the only shot like that in the whole movie, seemingly inserted to let the audience know, in case they’d somehow missed it, that Elizabeth Banks is very beautiful. Almost beautiful enough to star in movies, you might say! Whatever movie that shot is from, I want to watch it. In fact, I might be able to make it. Cut together her car material from The 40-Year-Old Virgin, Rogen in Knocked Up, import the tone of Accepted, the stakes of Boogie Nights, and splice it with the plot and attitude of The Girl Next Door and you’ve got a decent comedy. Or, more accurately, in-decent.
OK, that joke is silly and obvious, but so was Zack and Miri. FL
