Super short review: Zack and Miri Make a Porno, or "no man can be friends with a woman"

[samedietc]

Seriously, is it so hard to imagine men being friends with women without sex being a problem? I guess I shouldn't expect much more from Kevin Smith, considering how large bromances loom in his movies--Dante and Randal in Clerks, T.S. and Brodie in Mallrats, Bartleby and Loki in Dogma, Jay and Silent Bob in all of those movies and Jay and Silent Bob

Comments

[dr_smith]

While I agree that the "bromance" is a central theme of Smith's films, in several instances he seems to be quite critical of it. His portrayal of the "bromance" is rarely prescriptive. I would argue that the entire point of Chasing Amy is that Holden can't properly process a real relationship with a woman, and it causes his life to suffer a complete social breakdown. The "bros" are always the comic protagonists, but they are rarely exemplars of human behavior.

[samedietc]

I thought someone might raise Chasing Amy, mostly because I've never seen it. Definitely the bromances of Kevin Smith may be relegated to the minor characters or something that the major character needs to work through--but Zack and Miri Make a Porno was really not able to depict anything like a relationship between its main characters.

[dr_smith]

Looks like we're pretty even--I haven't seen Zack and Miri. My impression is that none of Smith's post-Jersey films have been especially good (Hell, Jay & Silent Bob is more sketch comedy than movie anyway), so I'm not doubting your critique there. I'm mostly just interested in deconstructing the "bromance", and its social implications, as a narrative element. It actually seems like Smith should have stuck with the "bromance" model, it's where he does his best work, and where he has the most to say.

[samedietc]

In a perverse way, I enjoyed Dogma--probably in the "how would you do this in a rpg" sort of way.

As for the bromance as narrative element, well, this was just something I was thinking of because of how flat the relationship between Zack and Miri was, and how much more compelling the relationship between Randal and Dante was--though maybe the issue isn't so much the bromance, as the triangle: Zack and Miri only have each other.

But then again, I find it kind of funny that I don't and you do use quotation marks around bromance, so I don't know that you should be listening to me.