Posts tagged Jennifer Schwalbach Smith

Erotic Reimagining

“Hotshots” looks at a movie!

ZACK AND MIRI MAKE A PORNO is not the worst film of the year, although it is probably down there with the worst, and yet it probably also has the worst title, which gives away half the plot right off the bat.

Written and directed by Kevin Smith and starring Seth Rogen and Elizabeth Banks, if it had just added “and Lived Happily Ever After” to the title, the whole plot would have been given away right there.

Yes, this is a typical “Boy meets girl, boy loses girl, boy gets girl back again” story, although they met 20 years ago in first grade and have been friends ever since, they have been living together platonically since high school for the past 10 years, and they decide to make a porno film together in order to pay their bills.

What could go wrong, right? Or, to put it a better way, what could go right?

Well, everything, actually, on both counts.

You see, it is just before Thanksgiving, the utilities in their apartment have been turned off for nonpayment, Zack meets someone at their 10th-year high-school reunion who says he is earning $100,000 a year making and distributing his own porno movies, and so Zack decides they can succeed by making their own porno movie and selling it just to their 800 classmates alone.

When Miri asks why they can’t find a different way to make money like other people do, Zack says, “Because other people have options. And dignity.”

Zack calls on some friends for help and investment, they decide to do an “erotic reimagining” of a STAR WARS movie, and we get the standard movie montage of auditions for roles and wardrobe tests. Ho hum.

Then a major setback causes them to reimagine their reimagining, which is right out of Stale Screenwriting 101.

Everything that happens is telegraphed to the audience and then prolonged for way too long, but don’t go see it expecting to see anything coming close to a real porno movie–assuming that you have ever seen one before, of course.

However, do expect to see some nudity, at least one really offensive sight gag, and lots and lots of profanity. And then some more profanity.

ZACK AND MIRI MAKE A PORNO is an erotic reimagining of a lame romantic comedy–and of a porno movie, too.

I’m Dan Culberson and this is “Hotshots.”