Respect Authority

I doubt I’m the first or only one to notice Seth Rogen has been churning out movies at an alarming rate. In fact, I haven’t seen such a dedicated shitting out of mindless content since R.L. Stine and Goosebumps. In enjoying my normal Sunday television allotment (read: all day), I saw no less than five trailers in one hour for Zack and Miri Make a Porno, a comedy ostensibly about a couple so broke they decide to make a porno, thereby ensuring all manner of hijinks.

What’s not entirely clear from the commercial is if, or for how long, Seth Rogen will be considered as the star of said porno. I find this one of the more significant queries surrounding this movie, primarily because Seth Rogen has somehow managed to get less and less attractive with each movie he makes. It’s almost as though he thinks burgeoning fame justifies gaining thirty pounds and abandoning maintenance of facial hair. This is rather ironic considering most up-and-coming celebrities try to go the opposite route, but what do I know about the world of fart jokes and uncomfortable comedic sex scenes?

Zack and Miri is being peddled on TV around the same time as Role Models, a Paul Rudd/Sean William Scott adventure that apparently doesn’t include Seth Rogen, but honestly might as well. It’s almost as if the comedy gang that is Rogen/Rudd/Apatow/etc. decided to split into two teams for this round, making double the money by putting half the effort into each film. After the festival of awkwardness that was Knocked Up, you’d think no one in the group would have that much confidence, but again, what do I know? At the very least, Zack and Miri director Kevin Smith, who milked his Jay & Silent Bob franchise dry and has since faded into oblivion (minus a semi-funny cameo on Live Free or Die Hard) called Apatow up and asked to borrow a few of his actors. 

The best part of Zack and Miri, however, is the dual trailers running, depending on whether you like your television cable-quality or battered by broadcast regulations. A normal trailer gives the movie’s full title, while one playing, for example, during a Sunday afternoon NFL Game, just calls the film Zack and Miri. Considering the trailer itself makes it fairly clear the film is about sex, on camera, and making money from it, I’m surprised anyone took the time to make a PG version of the preview, let alone one for the purposes of protecting fully grown football fans’ sensitivities. What’s really being accomplished here? Not only does the clipped title take away any relationship whatsoever to the movie itself, but will some unsuspecting tween or adult go to Zack and Miri expecting some sort of quirky love story and be blindsided by its actual plot? Should we start doing this with more movies? The 40-Year-Old Virgin becomes just The 40-Year-Old? Unfaithful becomes Another Richard Gere and Diane Lane Movie?

Maybe Seth Rogen should just give up on naming his movies altogether and instead catalog them by his weight and appearance. In which case Zack and Miri would really be the more-honest 230 pounds And Disheveled As All Hell.