ilovecress

Students of the late 90's had Clerks posters on their walls, right next to The Godfather, and the one of the tennis player scratching her ass. And that’s where Kevin Smith seems to fit, between the artistic and the scatological.

His latest film, Zach and Miri makes a porno comes 15 years after Clerks debuted, and Smiths audience has grown up. We were all there with the corpse shagging of Clerks, the Finger cuffs of Chasing Amy, and we all tolerated Ben Affleck in Mallrats. But then we passed the gross out baton onto the kids, who lapped up American Pie and, well American Pie 2. We moved onto the weirder Zoolander, and briefly South Park, before Judd Apatow came into our lives.

The Apatow era, as this period will undoubtedly be known, is the logical progression from Smiths work of the late 90's. The characters in these movies (nearly 15 films over the last 2 years) often start out as characters from a Kevin Smith movie, but end up more grown up than Smith’s characters ever did.

So what of the Kevin Smith film in the Apatow era? Well Zach and Miri Make a Porno is one of those sold three star films. It's okay. It’s not brilliant, but I didn't regret watching it. The synopsis is there in the title. Seth Rogen and Elizabeth banks play the titular Zach and Miri, who, when finding themselves skint and without electricity, water or heating, decide to make a porno movie to raise some cash. And during the making of this skin flick, they realise their true feelings for each other.

But this feels like Kevin Smith, half way there. There are some really touching scenes, and some excellent performances (especially by Banks), but ever present are the nob and poop gags, which feel out of place in this story. It’s like having an interesting adult conversation with someone, who then asks you to pull their finger. The 'laughs' jar, and Smith hasn’t worked out (as Apatow did with Knocked Up) how to tone the scatological humour along with a truthful and resonant story.

Although Smith deals with some of the dramatic scenes well, it sometimes comes across as mawkish, and often right on the nose. Smith seems to revert to nob-gag type all too often, which now seems out of context within this new ‘grown up’ style of filmmaking. Nearly there, Kev.