I’ve liked Kevin Smith ever since I saw the “If you plan to shoplift please let us know” sign taped up in a friend’s room in high school. The sign was from the movie Clerks, a 1994 independent film that was shot for less than thirty thousand dollars in the convenience store where Kevin Smith worked. After Clerks grossed over $3 million dollars in theaters, Kevin Smith went on to write and direct five more films featuring the same characters and similar settings, usually New Jersey: Mallrats, Chasing Amy, Dogma, Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back, and Clerks II.  Also of interest to Kansans is Kevin Smith’s rumored work in progress, a horror film called Red State in which a group of misfits encounter fundamentalism gone to the extreme in Middle America. The film supposedly features a preacher similar to one who is well known to Topekans.

Kevin Smith films are not for everyone. Clerks remains the only DVD I can remember my dad ever asking me to turn off, because he was tired of hearing a certain word beginning with the letter “f”. The DVD release of Zack and Miri, as the bowdlerized title is now sometimes listed, carries an R rating for strong crude sexual content including dialogue, graphic nudity and pervasive language.  Given those disclaimers though, I thought Zack and Miri Make a Porno was a delightful romance.

It’s your typical romantic comedy. Boy meets girl in school, they hang out but never realize they love each other, extreme circumstance forces them to see their true feelings, comedy ensues, happily ever after…only in this film making a porno is the underlying premise. I have mixed feelings about any Kevin Smith movie that doesn’t star his recurring character “Silent Bob” but bringing in Seth Rogan as the goofy male lead was a great casting decision.

Zack and Miri have been best friends forever, but when they get behind on their bills at their shared apartment and their power and water get turned off, they need to raise some money. After meeting a successful male porn star at their ten year high school reunion, Zack gets the idea that they can raise enough money to pay their bills by shooting a porno. He writes an awesome parody script, turning Star Wars into a series of gratuitous sex scenes called Star Whores and they recruit actors, a camera man and a producer. Things don’t go as planned. While Zack and Miri swear that nothing will change after their big sex scene, are these the words of people who seem prepared to be porn stars?

“We’ll start kissing on three, okay? One, Two, Three.”

One final note: make sure to keep watching after the credits for a hilarious commercial parody that is sure to make you giggle!