Today, thanks to the internet, pornography is ubiquitous, and this necessarily shapes the attitude of the generation that grew up with it. Having 10,000 different varieties of, say, Micronesian dwarfs gang-rogering an submissive Alaskan donkey up the ear canal, if that's your bag, only a mouse-click away, is necessarily going to affect you one way or another. Unisex slacker flatmates Zack (a fat dude) and Miri (a well fit female) have spent the last ten years dropping out, tuning in, serving coffee, and callously bantering about sick stuff, for example self-gratification gadgets such as the Fleshlight (a male relief aid that is a cross over between a lady's uglies and a torch, in case you've just returned from Mars or pretend not to know). But all this loose talk doesn't mean that the time-honored game of hide-the-kreplach with the Schickse of your predilection has become any less nerve-wrecking than 100 years ago. In a way, it has become worse because the internet leaves you in no doubt about how, while you haven't been getting any for the past decade, others are getting their tops and fingers on a very regular basis. "Regular basis" being a euphemism for hardcore penetrative sex with an entire cheerleader troupe of 18-year-old Asian nymphettes with no self respect or gagging reflex.
But I digress. Zack and Miri have been hanging out for some time whilst going nowhere fast, when the fascist utilities company cuts them off just because they haven't paid their bills for a year or so. When Miri finds out that her highschool heartthrob is now a gay porn-star, Zack has an incredibly great idea completely out of nowhere: let's pay the bills ... by also becoming porn-stars. Easier done than said, they get a few social dropouts together and start making porn. And, while they're at it, they decide to also bring their talents to the fore. At this point they both discover that they are a lot coyer than they think, and the director must have had similar feelings: the movie suddenly becomes very tame, and calls upon every porn cliché in the book. Director Kevin Smith has apparently missed out on that entire new-fangled internet wachumacallit, or maybe his pornographic education ended with 1980ies VHS porn, because his porn still has squeaky-voiced bimboes acting in "You must be the plumber, here to lay a pipe"-scenes.
To cut the whole story short, Zack and Miri do a very un-pornographic shagging scene which makes them fall in love. They can't admit this to each other, split up, and finally fall into each other's arms at the end. The end.
The reactionary bit is that a.) Miri stays fully dressed during the entire scene (a small reminder for all you puritan Americans out there: sex just works a lot better when you take your clothes off). Point b.) is that Kevin Smith clearly has no respect for the porn "industry" because he portrays the actresses as brainless bimbos, the actors as brainless him-bos, and porn as something that you can film with a wobbly DV camera and still make a fortune with. It would have been nice to simply see an alternative, less jaded view of the industry that's provided us all with many hours of solitary fun. I also thought it was a bit reactionary to cast the male part with a fat slob (sorry, Seth Rogen, you know I love you!) and the female part with a pristine beauty who would could equally well model for Vogue.
ZAMMAP is still watchable because Kevin Smith is a great filmmaker who could make a gripping documentary about the drying of paint on a humid day, because of the witty dialogue, and because of the great acting. Craig Robinson as Zack and Miri's motor-mouthed "disgruntled black dude" senior coworker coming especially to mind here.
But I digress. Zack and Miri have been hanging out for some time whilst going nowhere fast, when the fascist utilities company cuts them off just because they haven't paid their bills for a year or so. When Miri finds out that her highschool heartthrob is now a gay porn-star, Zack has an incredibly great idea completely out of nowhere: let's pay the bills ... by also becoming porn-stars. Easier done than said, they get a few social dropouts together and start making porn. And, while they're at it, they decide to also bring their talents to the fore. At this point they both discover that they are a lot coyer than they think, and the director must have had similar feelings: the movie suddenly becomes very tame, and calls upon every porn cliché in the book. Director Kevin Smith has apparently missed out on that entire new-fangled internet wachumacallit, or maybe his pornographic education ended with 1980ies VHS porn, because his porn still has squeaky-voiced bimboes acting in "You must be the plumber, here to lay a pipe"-scenes.
To cut the whole story short, Zack and Miri do a very un-pornographic shagging scene which makes them fall in love. They can't admit this to each other, split up, and finally fall into each other's arms at the end. The end.
The reactionary bit is that a.) Miri stays fully dressed during the entire scene (a small reminder for all you puritan Americans out there: sex just works a lot better when you take your clothes off). Point b.) is that Kevin Smith clearly has no respect for the porn "industry" because he portrays the actresses as brainless bimbos, the actors as brainless him-bos, and porn as something that you can film with a wobbly DV camera and still make a fortune with. It would have been nice to simply see an alternative, less jaded view of the industry that's provided us all with many hours of solitary fun. I also thought it was a bit reactionary to cast the male part with a fat slob (sorry, Seth Rogen, you know I love you!) and the female part with a pristine beauty who would could equally well model for Vogue.
ZAMMAP is still watchable because Kevin Smith is a great filmmaker who could make a gripping documentary about the drying of paint on a humid day, because of the witty dialogue, and because of the great acting. Craig Robinson as Zack and Miri's motor-mouthed "disgruntled black dude" senior coworker coming especially to mind here.