Zack and Miri Make a Porno (2008): C+

Kevin Smith blatantly invades Judd Apatow territory with Zack and Miri Make a Porno, which not only blends the bawdy with the unabashedly sentimental (a vein Smith has himself, admittedly, tapped before in the superior Chasing Amy), but also borrows Apatow’s favorite everyman in portly, scruffy Seth Rogen. It’s not an altogether unsuccessful tack to take, and certainly results in more profanely amusing bits than were found in Smith’s recent clunkers. Yet the sweetness of his tale – about two lifelong friends’ attempts to avoid homelessness by making money through the production of a porn film – is of such an eye-rollingly corny, contrived variety that the enterprise is salvaged solely by the luminous, versatile Elizabeth Banks. As Miri, Banks charmingly embodies something akin to a geeky ideal, a drop-dead beauty who’s cool enough to be uncool, her magnetism coming not merely from her looks, self-deprecating sense of humor, or comfort with dirty talk, but also from her status as an unsuccessful babe who’d cohabitate with a schlep like Zack in a dilapidated apartment and agree to have sex on video to subsist. This, of course, makes her a complete and utter fantasy, and Smith’s film (poorly lit and shot, as usual) is best when it simply adores her as a pinnacle of dreamy desire, the type of unrealistic hottie who’s awkward, insecure, happy boozing it up in dingy dives, and at ease discussing anal sex. Naturally, however, there are conventions to be adhered to, and thus despite a few extremely lewd sequences, Zack and Miri – especially during a rote third act in which the best friends can’t just screw because, regardless of their supposed brother-sister rapport, they deep-down luuuuuuv each other – proves only a passably conventional rom-com squishfest decked out with Smith’s usual pop-culture references.