Zach and Miri Make a Porno

***1/2 Stars

I'm starting to get a crush on Elizabeth Banks.

Banks is in three new movies currently playing right now. Oliver Stone's W, the newest one Role Models, and this, Zach and Miri Make a Porno, a movie in which the Weinstein Company chose to distribute solely based on its title. Banks is the charm, sass, and beauty of all of three of these films.

Zach and Miri Make a Porno does involve porn scenes, but that's not really what the film is about. It is actually a sweet and lovable story about two lifelong friends who are forced to make an adult movie due to insufficient funds. Through this dilemma, they discover that there is something deeper to their relationship.

Who would have thought that a love story could be successfully made through the medium of porn? Kevin Smith writes the raunchiest material this side of Two Girls One Cup and still manages to find his respectable muse. The film begins with Zach and Miri (Seth Rogen and Banks) on the day of their high school reunion. Miri is forcing Zach to go and he accepts because he'll pretty much do anything she asks (he never says it, but its obvious). This tells us that their trust factor is incredibly high, and that is proven when Miri agrees to Zach's lucid idea that making a porno will bail them out of their financial problems.

Zach works at a coffee shop with his buddy Delaney (Craig Robinson) with the same enthusiasm as a teenaged part-time employee who couldn't possibly care less about proper work etiquette. Smith's dialogue during the introduction of the store is really funny stuff. When a customer interrupts Zach and Delaney and says "Can I get a cup of coffee, black?" Delaney fires back "Can't you see we talkin', white?" The little comical touches Smith creates makes the scene explosively funny.

When the cameras start rolling on the actual porno, Zach and Miri agree to have sex with each other for the sake of saving their apartment. With this decision comes the truth. After they have sex for the movie, (very tastefully done by Smith, who makes the scene romantic) the two realize that they may be in love.

The film works best when focusing on the intimate relationship between Zach and Miri. The rest of the movie is filled with gross-out moments, that even I found to be borderline NC-17. However, I would have been extremely pissed had this been NC-17, when a torture porn show like Saw V gets an R-rating with no argument whatsoever. Ratings aside, the actual story of these characters show that Smith is still a great writer. He may be raunchier than ever, but strangely enough, Smith is still growing up. And as for Banks, with no argument whatsoever, the woman is a star to the ultimate degree.