On the plus side, Zack and Miri is very funny. I laughed. My wife laughed. The row of double-dating college students sitting behind us laughed. Also, the characters have their charms. Sure, the muddle-headed, male-screenwriter-with-arrested-development conception of Miri veers dangerously close to becoming an actual adult-film female, but Elizabeth Banks saves her with her charm. And Smith regular Jason Mewes steals the movie as a male porn star with his lanky, skid row looks and utter fearlessness.
Most charming and interesting of all is how Zack and Miri combines an old-fashioned romance plot structure – boy gets girl, boy loses girl, boy gets girl back – with a nostalgic depiction of adult films. The “porno” that Zack and Miri conceive is pure '70s/early '80s product and has the same warm, sentimental, cast and crew as the happy alternative-family vibe that Boogie Nights offered in its first half.
Zack and Miri is at its charming best when this rag-tag group merrily sets out to make a lovingly detailed Star Wars spoof. For that, the movie gets my recommendation, unless, of course, my first paragraph already turned you off. But, in that case, you probably aren’t even still reading this.
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