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Zack and Miri (2008) ✦ Full-Length Watchalong Reaction (Patreon)

Published:
2024-09-01 01:00:03
Edited:
2025-05-21 01:22:07
Imported:
2026-08
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Continuing my exposure to more of Kevin Smith's work outside of the View Askew, we've got ourselves another raunchy comedy! All I'll say is that I enjoyed this a lot more than Clerks II. 😉 Looking forward to your comments! Please enjoy.

If you'd rather watch on YouTube, click here.

✦ KL

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Comments

Jorge Farah

Solid raunchy comedy even if it's Kevin Smith cosplaying as Judd Apatow. I love how he used his frequent collaborators Jason Mewes and Jeff Anderson here. And I loved Justin Long's character. Funny piece of trivia is that everyone was ready for this to be Kevin's big mainstream breakthrough, since R-rated comedies were all the rage in the 2000s and Seth Rogen was one of the biggest movie stars in the planet at the time. It underperformed dramatically, and some say its box office failure fully derailed Kevin Smith's career trajectory.

Jorge Farah

Also: Elizabeth Banks kills it in this movie. Many of the funniest and the most moving dramatic moments are from her delivery.

Tyler Foster

As Jorge said above, Smith had spent decades with a "ceiling" on his movies at the box office of around $40m. Rogen and Banks had both had their major movie breakouts already, and he hoped that this move away from the View Askew-niverse working with established stars would be his move into the mainstream. When the movie hit the same $40m ceiling that his movies routinely did, he went into a bit of a depression, leading to him making the first movie he didn't write (Cop Out, an even bigger disaster) and then moving into television for awhile, working on various shows in the CW's stable of DC Comics TV shows, where he said the speed of production allowed him to get back out of his head and relax, following which he reinvented his career with some more ambitious indie movies, before finally returning back to the Askew-niverse. (If you ask me, making a movie about making a porno was probably a bad idea, since half the theaters were awkward about putting the posters up or the title on the marquee, and "Zack and Miri" wasn't nearly as memorable of a title.) Although some of the humor has definitely dated and falls into that same Smith-being-edgy thing that plagues some of these later movies compared to the '90s ones, one of the things I appreciate about Zack and Miri is that Smith found a way to draw on his own life. While it's only a part of the film and it's heavily fictionalized, the idea of shooting a movie where the protagonist works at night when the place is closed is how Smith made Clerks. I also think the movie has an obvious secret weapon in the combination of Rogen and Banks, who briefly worked together in a previous movie. They have great friend chemistry and great romantic chemistry, and the movie mostly works on the back of how good they are on screen together. I also think their story does a better job of cutting through the crude stuff with something more openly sentimental, which I wanted more of from Clerks II. Another interesting thing is that I believe this is the first movie after Mewes got sober and turned his life around. If you haven't read it, there is a great and very lengthy piece that Smith wrote about helping Mewes out of addiction. It later became a chapter in one of his books, I believe, so I don't know if you can still read it online, but I highly recommend it. Traci Lords (Bubbles) and Katie Morgan (Stacey) were both adult film actresses before this. Lords has been acting in traditional movies since the '90s, but this may have been Morgan's debut and it propelled her into a whole second stage of her career where she did sex ed videos. Also, for many years, I have always remembered that needle drop when Zack and Miri film their scene together, "Hold Me Up" by Live. I hadn't heard it before or anything, but I found it to be a great choice.

Tyler Foster

I would put a bit of an asterisk on this, because as you discuss in the outro here, comedy is tricky. At this point I have no recollection of when you said it, but I also remember you saying nearer when I started watching the channel that you felt you diverged from popular consensus on comedy more than any other genre, or something to that effect (maybe I'd seen something on your Letterboxd from before the channel that was low-rated and was surprised by it), so I've always tried to be more confident in my suggestions when submitting comedies into your form. That said, Elizabeth Banks has also made a whole second career for herself as a producer. Her company is called Brownstone Productions, and she runs it with her husband Max Handelman. She is most famous for producing, directing one of, and appearing in (in a supporting role) the Pitch Perfect movies, which I really enjoy. They have a few unfortunate jokes of their own, and of course the music may be a copyright nightmare, but I'll never turn down an opportunity to rewatch them. Banks also came up into movies and television in part through her work with members of a sketch comedy group called Stella, which itself was spun off from members of a larger sketch comedy group called The State. The State had a cult TV show (also called "The State") on MTV back in the '90s, and many of its members are now quite famous, the most famous probably being comedian Thomas Lennon, who stars in the TV show "Reno 911!" and is also a famous screenwriter (not to mention, he had a notable non-comedy role as the psychiatrist testing Sammy Jankis in Memento, a role he sort of imitated/reprised in The Dark Knight Rises as a homage to Memento, telling Bruce Wayne, "I cannot recommend that you go heli-skiing"). Paul Rudd is also an unofficial friend/honorary member of the group, as well as comedy stars Amy Poehler, Molly Shannon, Janeane Garofalo, and even Bradley Cooper.

Nathan Jasper

Opening thoughts, that's what you get for stealing her hand warmer. Karma be karma-ing. The concept of planning out your Black Friday work day so you can shop is kind of funny now because it's all been made moot. They start early Black Friday deals 2 weeks in advance, then they have the Thanksgiving Day deals and the Black Friday deals and Cyber Monday... Everything's been moved online in today's world. Malls are basically one big clothing shop with a walking track and food trucks. Though I was surprised to find out that Bitcoin has a store? Isn't the whole point of Bitcoin to be solely online? Very weird. Honestly, Elizabeth Banks could pull off a mustard bottle. But yeah that dress was way too yellow. 😂 My school never had a 10-year reunion and I'm not sure I would have went if they did anyway but if Justin long and Brandon Routh were in my class, I might have reconsidered. The realizations Zack was having was absolutely hilarious. "They even fight like regular people" is the line that broke me. 😂 Makes me wonder what he originally thought gay people fighting sounded like! Zack is such a typical guy though. Obviously he's interested in Miri and she seems to have a little thing for him too but he wants to have sex with multiple women in the porno and purposefully writes Miri as only having sex with Zack. Like he wants her but he doesn't want to tell her that he wants her and the thought of anyone else being with her makes him jealous. So then she's in the position of having to speak up for herself and do a scene that she might not actually want to be doing all for the purpose of being a little jealous herself that Zack apparently in her eyes doesn't think any more of her than the other girl he wants to screw. Look, it's just an inevitability, if you live with someone long enough and you know someone long enough, there will come a time when feelings may arise and you just have to talk about it. Both parties ignoring it and pretending it doesn't exist it's just going to make things awkward and worse. Especially if you decide to make a porno together. I love that when the moment happened, they were in their moment of passion and weren't even thinking about the movie... And then the realization hit right after. They ARE into each other. And now their first time's either tainted or memorable. Not gonna lie, gagged a little bit during the...um...pull out moment. As Silent Bob said in Clerks, most people will break your heart but not everyone will bring you lasagna at work. I agree, humor is tricky. It's also not a priority genre for me. Drama and Sci-Fi are my favorites. Comedy and horror are probably my least favorite genres for the simple fact that the bulk of both genres are repetitious rehashings that are neither needed nor wanted. The good thing about comedy though is that it has so many subcategories like satire, slapstick, raunch, buddy, dramedy, dark, etc. There's plenty to choose from. What makes Kevin Smith comedy different is that, despite its raunch moments, it's smart and elevated above other comedies. Clerks for instance, the dialogue alone is rich and real. Kevin Smith's movies always feel so natural like you can really hear everyday people saying those words. And a lot of it is also what we want to say but we keep it inside. Having a variety of things you like or even a small variety of things you like isn't a bad thing as long as you stay open-minded to at least trying other things. I have a friend who used to refuse (and still is stubborn to an extent) to try new movies because she was afraid she might not like them then that's two hours gone. Those kinds of moments are when you have to really bite your tongue to not say something nasty 😂 being closed off like that and obsessively rewatching Scream just isn't something I can wrap my head around. Branching out is how we learn about ourselves and progress ourselves, even with movies. Especially with movies actually because movies are literally our way of showcasing how we as a species have progressed or in some cases regressed. Books, movies, and shows are all basically like holding up a huge mirror to yourself and to the world. It's our minds, our morals, and our dreams on a hundred years' worth of celluloid. You know what would be interesting to see is a comedy movie tier list. Think you could rank the comedies you've seen? Might be too big of an undertaking! But it would be interesting to see what your tops and lows are. Anyway, fun movie! Thanks for sharing!

Death Lego

That scene is so good, that it makes me think about leaving the room to give them some privacy every time I have watched this. And that needle drop is epically choosen. A fabulous juxtaposition to all the silliness we had before. When it's the one, the whole world might as well not be there. Perhaps an overblown metaphor to have ya friends filming and watching. Even so, literally had me fanning my face like a flush or exuberant valley girl. Elizabeth Banks crushes it for this movie, and like you I'm crushing on her a little more, each time I watch this. Maybe an odd cinematic pairing by sliver screen's ludicrous traditions. But by the end it's not hard to understand why Zack and Miri are so into to each other. Not an obvious choice for box office success, but this delivers brilliantly in more ways than would be obvious, until you watch it.

Steve Mercier

"How come you get to be all Buck Rogers, having sex in the 25th century with Twiki and Dr. Theopolis, and I'm stuck to a bottle of Jergen's in the batroom?" "Holy Bejeesus, tell me you don't use my Jergen's to whack it." "No, you know what I do? I light a bunch of candles, and I sprawl out on my sheets, and I listen to Sting. No, I'm a guy. You give me two Popsicle sticks and a rubber band and I'll find a way to fuck it, like a filthy MacGuyver!" Yeah...love this movie. Good shit.