You just know that Judd Apatow wishes he’d gotten this idea first: I certainly wish he had, because he almost certainly would have done a better job with it than Kevin Smith does here. Seth Rogan and Elizabeth Banks are the title characters, slackers and childhood friends who platonically share an apartment in a cruddy section of Pittsburgh. That’s right, Pittsburgh—New Jersey’s most loyal filmmaker has crossed the state line into Pennsylvania, though I can’t imagine why he bothered. (Hey, Kevin, if you’re scouting new locations, Buffalo is clearly right up your alley.)

Their depressing high school reunion is enlivened when Zack learns that Miri’s one-time crush is now a gay porn star in LA. And it gives him an idea: They can solve their financial problems by making their own porno movie! The ex can lead them to a distributor, which is the only real hurdle in that business—after that all you need is a camera and flesh. What ensues is genial but not terribly funny, as Z&M assemble a cast and a site and tell each other that when they Do It on camera it will just be a business thing that won’t affect their friendship. Yeah, right. A romantic comedy trying to pass itself off as a transgressive indie, Zack and Miri is surprisingly conservative, aside from a little requisite nudity and a single gross-out joke. Smith apparently stopped watching porn in the early 1990s, for which we can only be grateful: For a guy who, in the end credits, claims he spends way too much time on the internet, he seems to have missed that kids nowadays get their porn for free online instead of buying it on DVDs.

Despite having started out by making a no-budget movie, Clerks, he gets little mileage out of the production of an amateur movie. The college kids at the screening I attended laughed uproariously at every profanity, of which Z&M has an awful lot. I won’t say that the dialogue isn’t accurate for characters in their 20s, who talk as if there were a prize for maximum insertions of the syllables “fuck” and “shit” into every conversation. But it’s really not fun to listen to. Smith ought to know what kids don’t, that swearing either needs to be portioned out minimally so as to retain its shock value, or used with panache (as in Clerks). Otherwise, there’s nothing more dishearteningly banal to have to listen to.

—m. faust