These days, everyone is struggling to make ends meet. Zack and Miri, two best friends who have known each other since first grade, are having just as much trouble as everyone else in the film "Zack and Miri Make a Porno."
First, the water in their apartment goes off, then the power, and barring any really creative and exotic moneymaking schemes, their apartment will no longer be theirs.
However, a creative and exotic moneymaking scheme is exactly what Zack comes up with: He and Miri can make a porno!
So Zack (Seth Rogen) and Miri (Elizabeth Banks) do just that. Along with a couple of female strippers, two young men with "special talents," the camera-weilding goalie on Zack's hockey team, and Delaney (who you will recognize as Darryl Philbin from "The Office"), the duo begin to make a porno using "Star Wars" as their inspiration; you can imagine the shenanigans that ensued.
However, these original plans get foiled and Zack is again convinced of his failure as a human being because he can't even make a porno. However, while sitting with the rest of his dejected cast and crew in the coffee shop where he works, Zack comes up with a brilliant plan to make the movie there with a cappuccino storyline.
After a hastily written script, the porno project is up and running again.
The conflict in the story is apparent from the title and opening scenes. Zack and Miri are best friends and have long lived in peaceful cohabitation without romantic relations of any kind. Now, in order to produce their movie, they have to have sex together for the first time.
Zack reassures Miri that it's "just sex," like "the kind you'd have with a stranger from a bar that you bring home." But the filmmakers subtly alert the viewer that it won't be "just sex" like the rest of the characters are having in front of that handheld camcorder. When Zack and Miri make their debut in front of their co-stars, the music and mood change and it's a scene that you would expect in a movie like "Titanic," rather than in a Seth Rogen film.
"Zack and Miri Make a Porno" is very explicit, as the title would suggest. If you are going to watch this movie, you must understand that its barely passable "R" rating was earned only after the directors had made significant cuts.
Beyond this though, the movie is a funny and poignant mix of friendship, love, and sex, with a couple of potty-humor scenes thrown in for an extra laugh (and you will laugh).
Seth Rogen and Elizabeth Banks do an excellent job in the title roles, mastering their transition from friendship to "something else" as the movie progresses.
The other characters provide a funny background for Zack and Miri's story. The interactions between these other characters and the scenes with Zack and Miri also expertly highlight the difference between having sex and making love.
A friend, who I went to see the movie with, said that she thought Zack and Miri would be the perfect date movie: "You have the dirty stuff for the guys and the heart-warming romance for the girls."
While I don't quite think that Zack and Miri would be your best bet for a date, I do think it's a great movie to see.
I can guarantee you'll never think of Starbucks the same way again.