Zack and Miri Make A Porno

In the immortal words of that elderly couple who sat behind Kevin in Reno 911: Miami (7 Beards): "What is this a pooooorrrrrnnnnooooo?!" No, but seriously, this movie isn't ACTUALLY a porno. Although, my mom think it is if she ever actually watched it, but I'll go to great lengths to make sure that never happens. In a lot of ways Zack and Miri Make A Porno may look like a porno, it's really about the making of a porno. When this is over can I get someone to count how many times I say 'porno' in this review?

The movie starts two of the new faces of comedy Seth Rogen and Elizabeth Banks. They play lifelong friends who are living together platonically in the same town they grew up, working shit jobs, and struggling to pay bills that were due months ago. The plot's fairly simple, but it works because the humor of this movie is driven by basically one thing: that two best friends are trying to make a porno together because all their utilities are cut off and they're about to get evicted.  

What suprised me about this was how at the end of this movie, they stripped away the comedy and suddenly there was this resolution to a story that I had been unwittingly following. Basically, once I stopped laughing and settled down for two seconds, I realized that this movie actually had something going on. That something turned out to be pretty good. And, they also threw in just enough twists to take a rather tired story and make it interesting and endearing.

Who's gonna like this movie? Well let me ask you a few questions:

Do you like Seth Rogen?

Do you like Kevin Smith movies?

Do you like porno titles that are sexy reimaginings of actual movie titles?

Do you like porno?

If you answered yes to any of those, then you're going to like this movie. If you answered yes to more then one, you're really going to like this movie. And, if you didn't answer yes to any of those questions then, well, you should probably go watch Brokeback Mountain again.

Zack and Miri Make A Porno gets 6 Beards.

The Wackness

I won't lie in this next sentence. I loved Josh and Drake, even after Josh got skinny. I mean, it was still a great show just Josh's self depreciating humor didn't quite make so much sense (or did it because possibly he was still wrestling with his inaccurate self-percieved body image due to his rapid weight loss?). Seriously, it was still funny. What's not funny is that Carly got her own fucking stupid show and it's fucking stupid. That's not what this is about though, this is about The Wackness and how the reason I chose to watch it is because it stars the infamous Josh Peck. A measure of how stoked I was about this movie? Instead of leaving it festering at the bottom of my Netflix Queue I bumped it up to just below the last 4 discs of Battlestar.

First off, this movie is set in the summer of 1994 and it is the most 90s-tastic movie that wasn't made in the 90's that I have ever seen. I almost got nostalgic. Part of this setting was the soundtrack, which was awesome because it mainly featured some of the best rap to come out of the late 80's and early 90's. They throw a few other tracks in there as well, but overall it was probably one of the most aptly put together soundtracks I've heard in a while. This is mainly due to the fact that music made sense in time with the movie.

Anyways, the film follows Josh Peck as 18 yr old Luke Shapiro who has just graduated high school and is trying to earn as much money as he can in his summer before college by selling more weed. What was interesting is that the drug aspect of this film ends up taking a back seat and really only seems to serve as a vessel to string all the elements of the plot together, and to tug them along through the stream so they don't get caught in some twigs and stagnate. Beyond this the film revolves around Luke's relationship with his (kind of) shrink Dr. Spires and their relationship with eachother as well as the women in their lives.

The Wackness takes on a lot of big thoughts in this film and succeeds completely. I was totally satisfied at the end. Part of me wishes I had watched this when I was 17 or 18, but the other part of me knows that I would have rejected most of it outright because it has a backdrop of drug culture. The rest of the movie really overshadows this though (like I said before) and it's the challenges Luke and Spires face that are what really make this movie appealing. Besides all this though, the movie was excellently shot with quite a few Charlie Kaufman-esque cuts and dreams sequences that are excellently interwoven to keep from the veiwer from feeling complacent.

This is a movie I would recommend that most people under the age of 35 watch, but I make no promises that it will be fully enjoyed.

The Wackness gets 7 Beards And A Moustache.

Josh and Drake gets 6 Beards pending a full review.