Zack and Miri Make a Porno

Zack and Miri are lifelong friends and roommates in Pittsburgh who have reached their late twenties with little to show for it. When their unpaid bills lead to the water and power being shut off, they decide that the fastest way out of debt is to make an adult film together. They recruit a cast from among their friends and acquaintances and shoot it after hours in the coffee shop where Zack works. Once the two of them are in front of the camera as a pair, their long-standing platonic bond starts to shift into something neither had admitted before.

Kevin Smith directed and wrote the film, and Scott Mosier produced it. It is the eighth of the seventeen films Smith has directed, arriving between Clerks II and Cop Out, and it returns to the talk-heavy, budget-conscious comedy territory of his earlier work while giving it a warmer romantic shape. Seth Rogen and Elizabeth Banks lead as Zack and Miri, with Craig Robinson, Gerry Bednob, Edward Janda and Nicholas Lombardi among the credited cast of forty.

The film opened in 2008 and grossed around 42 million dollars worldwide against a 24 million dollar budget, a modest return. On IMDb it holds 6.5 out of 10 from roughly 186,000 votes, and on TMDB 6.3 out of 10 from about 2,757 votes. A critics' rating of 6.4 out of 10 from 194 reviews places it close to the audience scores, suggesting broadly similar reactions rather than a sharp divide between reviewers and viewers.