zack and miri make a porno

Most of Kevin Smith's films - especially his first few - were set in the "View Askewniverse". What this meant was that they were all set in the same world, so although the main character of each film might change, the characters from other films would be kicking about somewhere.

Some may appear as secondary characters or as cameos, or not at all, but the idea was they'd all be kicking about somewhere. The films were all pretty much also set in Smith's native New Jersey, although they'd occasionally venture elsewhere too.

But the key point was that the films all shared the same sense of humour and the same overly-verbose style of writing that Smith built his career on.

But more recently, Smith has tried branching out. For example, there was Jersey Girl, which was definitely not a VA film and also marked a very different style, notably with the huge monologing dialogue pretty much gone. By all accounts it tanked.

And that's been kinda a theme: when Smith has done a VA movie - a 'proper' Smith movie - they've done good business, but when he steps outside, there's been a tendency for a more mixed reaction. Sometimes you can see why, but others it's not so clean cut - I quite enjoyed Jersey Girl, for example.

Anyway, the point is that Zack and Miri isn't a VA film, but it might as well be. There's a lot in common here with the VA stuff - the humour is the same, the monologing is very much in attendance and even the theme of the movie is very VA. But it doesn't feature any of the VA characters and isn't set in Jersey, etc, etc.

It does feature some of the actors who have been in VA films, though they don't play their VA characters... except they're not 100% different.

See what I mean - it's technically not a VA film, but it doesn't really represent a huge departure, ether. It's like Smith wanted to make a movie similar to the other VA stuff but by tweaking some things he thought he could sneak it past people and hence break out. Only he change enough stuff, so it's a half-way house film.

I know I've wibbled on a bit about the same basic point for ages, but it kinda sums up my feeling on the film - because it's not a VA film, it kinda feels wrong, somehow. Because it's meant more as a regular comedy, the insertion of the usual Smith stuff also feels odd.

Which isn't to say there's not plenty to laugh at and that the story basically hangs together, it just disconcerted me a bit. I enjoyed it, but it confused me.

There was one element that didn't really work for me, though. The making of the porno stuff felt like a kind of rose-tinted view of it. I mean, they didn't really have any particular problems making the thing. Well, there was one big setback, but for example, there were no performance problems for the porn stars, even though most of them weren't actual porn stars.

Plus the porno that they were making looked like it would actually have been really bad, but then I think that was kinda the point.

I was also a little disappointed with the package - there were no extras at all. I mean, I appreciate it's probably a rental version, but it would have been nice to have something by way of extras.