Fabrizio del Wrongo writes:

I’m never quite sure what to make of Kevin Smith, but I found myself enjoying his “Zack and Miri Make a Porno.” With the possible exception of the Farrelly brothers, no one gets more pleasure out of juvenile sex jokes than Smith; when he manages to avoid parodying himself — his actors sometimes fall into the trap of sounding too much like Kevin Smith — his gusto for greasy-kid humor is cheerily infectious. Smith reminds me of the Farrellys in another respect: like them, he has few pretensions, and he has real feeling for blue-collar perspectives and idioms. Here that understanding extends to his characters’ attitudes about sex, which in spite of the movie’s over-the-top raunchiness remain rooted in recognizable human complexity — you rarely feel as though Smith is scoring points off these people or sidestepping the untidiness of their feelings. (In this it’s reminiscent of my favorite Smith film, the 1997 “Chasing Amy.”) “Zack and Miri” is also an affectionate tribute to the tradition of DIY filmmaking: it’s no accident that it’s set in Pittsburgh, the home base of zombie auteur George Romero, and Romero’s makeup wiz Tom Savini turns up in the role of a man who rents a”studio” to Seth Rogen’s wannabe film crew. (I wonder: Is the cheap-o sex video to the 2000s what the cheap-o horror flick was to the 1900s?) The actors seem to be having as much fun as Smith. I particularly enjoyed Craig Robinson as the porno’s browbeaten, racially aggrieved producer (he just wants to see some titties), and Justin Long is a hoot as the gravel-voiced queer who inspires the whole scheme. The ending is disappointingly conventional, but by then “Zack and Miri” had won me over.