When Harry Talked Really Dirty to Sally

Just finished screening Kevin Smith's new raunchfest, Zack and Miri Make a Porno, and it's hilarious. Not just funny but choke-on-your-Goobers-spit-'em-on-the-floor funny. Who knew that gutterspeak smut and gratuitous nudity could be so doggone romantic?

Yes, I said romantic. Not that candy-and-flowers stuff but comedy that grabs you by the privates -- never gently -- while the other other hand is tugging your heart strings. I thought that Forgetting Sarah Marshall was about as far as effective romantic comedy could go without an NC-17 rating but I forgot that Smith was snowballing through scatalogically sexual humor when Judd Apatow and his merry band of perverts were still playing Army tent with girlie magazines.

Smith borrows Apatow's poster boy Seth Rogen for this one, uncovering facets of his horny lug persona that I didn't think possible after tiring of his overexposure. Rogen plays Zack, the usual loser with a jovial attitude about it, whose roommate Miri (Elizabeth Banks, I'm in love) is equally busted. In order to pay the bills they decide to produce a porn movie in the coffee shop where they work, recruiting a cast of eager beavers including Smith stalwart Jason "Jay" Mewes and adult movie legend Tracy Lords.

First they need a title, which as any porn aficionado knows must be based on a real movie, so Smith rolls out a laundry list of possibilities: Edward Penishands and Lawrence of a Labia are the only ones I can get away with printing (I think). Finally they settle on Star Whores, with obscene twists on characters names that makes me wonder why George Lucas isn't suing (the movie's sound was processed at Lucas' Skywalker studio, so he must be aware).

Yet at the core of Zack and Miri Make a Porno is the theme that When Harry Met Sally proposed, that friends stop being friends after having sex. That movie made viewers swoon by proving it wrong. Smith has the same goal in mind with Zack and Miri, using smuttier jokes, frontal nudity and dirty pop culture references. Put it this way: Meg Ryan's faked orgasm in WHMS seems like a Saturday morning kid show now.

I like the way Smith keeps growing as a filmmaker, from the basement values of Clerks and Mallrats, to experiments in sappy emotions with Chasing Amy and Jersey Girl. He has learned how to move a camera and edit smartly, write with purposeful obscenity and lead actors to do more than recite lines. Zack and Miri Make a Porno opens Oct. 31 and mouths will be agape well into November.

Now excuse me, but I have to see if this Dutch Rudder idea really works.