Kevin Smith and Zack and Miri.

Warning: Entry contains a lot of Kevin Smith movie spoilers. Be warned.

I'm not going to lie, I'm a Kevin Smith obsessive. I've seen every one of the flicks, watched 2 1/2 of the Evening with Kevin Smith DVDs, and listened to nearly all of his podcast with producer Scott Mosier entitled SModCast. I love this man, in a totally hetero way. Thus, I immediately had to see his latest, Zack and Miri Make A Porno, and it didn't disappoint, though, there were a couple of dangerous trends that seem consistent with Smith.

The first is that his films never ever gross more than $30 million domestically at the box office. This isn't bad if it's a movie like 2006's Clerks II where the project revels in being awesomely low-budget, despite its more mainstream approach. However, on a project like Zack and Miri or Jersey Girl, there is decidedly more being banked on because of the star power of Ben Affleck or Seth Rogen. Admittedly, this is very unfair to point out as a problem on Smith, because he makes the content he wants to and almost all of the features have earned their money back in then some on DVD. Not to mention, Zack and Miri was released on Halloween, one week before another R-rated comedy in Role Models as well as the same night that young adults really don't want to see movies. This would undoubtedly lead to a rant about the idiocy of the Weinstein Company, but I'll avoid that rant for now.

The second, however, is a more legit criticism. Smith's efforts to hamfist a love story into all of his works is becoming pretty ridiculous. The brilliant thing about the first Clerks movie was the fact that at the end of the day, the lead protagonist Dante still had his troubles and still had to decide between the woman that loves him and the woman he inexplicably loves. However, in Clerks II and Zack and Miri, the lead character is inexplicably in love with a character and their response is to be in love back with him. Both do attempt to handle it in some way that says that great friendship could always lead to great love, but in both films it feels forced and it's often the weakest part of the story. It also wrongly accuses that friends who have random acts of sex at points during their friendship are totally in love and set for perfect matrimony. I'm not a humbug for love or anything of the sort and I enjoy both movies immensely despite my dislike for the ending, but Smith trying to be overly sentimental isn't as cool with me.

Of course, Zack and Miri is a pile of laughs regardless. That aspect of the films hasn't changed, really. Smith writing dirty jokes for funny people to say still works. And Smith is making a capable movie in a different universe than the New Jersey flicks and succeeded for the most part with the content. The acting's all pretty solid, as even real porn stars such as Katie Morgan and Traci Lords are not wooden in the film and that's a perfectly fine achievement for any filmmaker to make. (Well, as fine an achievement as that Boondock Saints guy getting a hilariously odd performance out of Ron Jeremy.)

The characters show enough of Smith's trademark wit without it entirely being a situation where every character is essentially Kevin Smith. This doesn't have problems of a movie like say Mallrats where both leads are thinner, sexier version of Smith's thoughts essentially. Sure, there's a lot of times where the Zack character is Kevin Smith as portrayed by Seth Rogen, but Rogen's comedic sensibilities are already a nice match to Smith's writing. And even in comparison to Rogen's work in Judd Apatow's features, the straight-laced female here is at least given a chance to be reasonably funny here.

Nonetheless, I think I'm just going on and on at this point. I think that since this is about four weeks out from the release of the movie, you're not likely to find it in any theatrical screens anywhere near you, but check it out on DVD. However, if you already can't stand Smith's increasingly mainstream sensibilities (which, in fairness, he's had in basically every feature since Clerks) you probably won't dig this. Oh, and if you don't like the subject matter, you won't like it, either. But if you're a Smith fan, well, you probably already saw it. And you probably loved it.