Funny And Sexy– Is It Possible

We rented “Zach and Miri Make a Porno” from Netflix this weekend.  The premise is quite simple– long time friends and roommates Zach and Miri are broke, and decide to remedy the situation by filming a porno flick.  Of course nothing really goes as planned, and things get weird between the two friends when the idea of having sex with each other and a bunch of strangers comes into play.

Overall I enjoyed the movie.  Seth Rogen who plays the main character Zach, does a great job being the slightly irresponsible but good intentioned roommate.  Elizabeth Banks play Miri, who kind of seems too sexy to have been living with Zach for the past decade.  These main characters get developed well through witty dialogue.  My biggest problem was that you could see where the plot was going every second of the film–  no major surprises.  Zach and Miri attend their high school reunion and meet a moderately successful gay porn star.  Brandon St. Randy mixes Keanu Reeves good looks, Clint Eastwood’s scratchy voice, and a dash of old fashioned compassion in perfect proportion to create his almost-but-not-quite over-the-top performance.  I kept waiting for him to appear later on in the movie, but was sorely disappointed.  Oh, I guess I should have put “spoiler alert” before that last sentence.

I don’t know exactly how this type of compensation works, but someone should be paying Jason Mewes because they really just stole the his character of Jay from several movies (Clerks, Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back, Clerks 2, and so on) with the Lester character.  He looked and sounded just like Jay, which really bothered me since all of the other characters seemed so original.

My favorite line of the movie was Zach telling Miri, “I don’t mean to alarm you… but I think I just jerked off Lester a little bit.”

See this movie if: you are a Seth Rogen fan and enjoy porn satire.

Don’t see this movie if: you are on a first date, want to watch a real porn movie, or want to be surprised by exciting plot twists.

And, while I’m thinking about comedy pornography, I think the best movie to see in this genre is “Orgazmo.”  Written by South Park creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone, Orgazmo details the transformation of Joe Young from a Jahova’s witness on his first mission to taking down an organized crime ring.  A variety of jokes about Utah (Joe Young, “I’m not a superhero! I’m a Latter-Day Saint.”),  fake boobs (“My doctor says now I have enough silicone in my body to kill a small elephant! Isn’t that cool?”), and even a surprisingly insightful debate by the porn stars about who gets degraded by pornography.

The movie might have seen a wider audience if it hadn’t gotten an “NC-17” rating.  I don’t think it is any more or less graphic as “Zach and Miri,” which received and “R” rating.  I suspect the people who rate movies just don’t like Matt Stone and Trey Parker.  I’ve read that “Team America” and “South Park: The Movie” both orginally received NC-17 ratings.  Which is interesting since one was made completely out of puppets and the other one was a cartoon.

So if you are only going to see one funny pornographic movie this summer, watch Orgazmo.  If you are going to see more than one, also check out “Zach and Miri Make a Porno.”