rated NC-17

Kevin Smith’s celebrated slacker Askewniverse (so coined after his View Askew Productions) is officially folding in on itself. His irreverent, foul-mouthed underground hits like “Clerks” and “Chasing Amy” certainly laid the tracks for the recent slobcom locomotive of Judd Apatow (and Apatow’s the first to admit it). But now it appears that Smith is actually trying to make an Apatow-style flick. The two factories have always shared a certain slack-hero sensibility, generally casting smarter-than-average working class stiffs into suburban street level conflicts, which they wriggle through on the power of snappy dialogue (equal parts pith and filth) and improbably gorgeous leading ladies. Smith further blurs the line here by hiring a good number of Apatow’s familiars in many supporting roles, most notably Seth Rogen as his Yogi Bear-ish lead.

Though it’s not a far throw for Rogen, playing essentially the same role he’s been playing for years, the magic comes really in the chemistry he’s able to generate with co-star Elizabeth Banks. The two play a pair of 20-somethings rooming together in a divey little apartment in a frozen Pittsburg wasteland. Friends since childhood, they have an easy, natural and purely platonic rapport. They share everything, including an overflowing unpaid bill file. Smith may be commenting, sideways like, on the state of our times, but as the two slide together into their 10th high school reunion, they face poverty, utility shut off and eviction. They need money, and they need it fast.

A chance meeting at the reunion with the surprise boyfriend of one of the old football heartthrobs, a happily successful gay porn star (played with a sharp-edged queeny relish by “I’m a Mac” guy Justin Long), gives Zack the idea of a lifetime. You’ve seen the title, so you know where it goes.

The movie desperately attempts to balance Smith’s early penchant for pointedly smutty language and his recently developed sweet-tooth for touchy-feely romance, and to some degree of success. The two don’t always marry, but as one’s mind grows numb to the steady stream of sex and profanity, the softer notes begin to take hold. As the titular pair go about borrowing meager funds to get their golden egg rolling, casting a fun little entourage (with a couple of actual porn stars, and Askewniverse stalwart Jason Mewes in a scene-stealing full-frontal turn as the stupidest, um, member of the cast), building their crappy cardboard sets and hiring a one-man camera crew, another interesting subtext begins to emerge. It turns out, the whole film is nothing less than a celebration of “make-something-from-nothing” ingenuity and a love letter to independent film making in particular. When doors are locked on Zack’s coffee shop and curtains are pulled for them to start shooting their scenes “on location,” it’s an unmistakable reference to Smith’s freshman effort “Clerks,” which he filmed during closing hours at the corner market where he worked. It’s actually quite galvanizing.

Overcoming the hundred daily adversities that come with producing even the most horrible movie can build a body’s character. As our slacker heroes find themselves actually doing something for a change, and as they slowly show signs of finally succeeding, their bond grows even tighter. As they nervously realize, however, that the time to, well, consummate their plan is rapidly approaching, unexpected emotions start to bubble forth. After finally taking the plunge, so to speak, they both come out of it changed and confused. Apparently, true love can do that, and naturally, everything goes to hell.

After the whirlwind of bad manners and toilet humor leading up to the deed, the final reel feels more than a little overwhelmed, trying to sew it all back up into a digestible date-film. But overall, against all the odds he stacks against himself, Smith manages it. Though his universe and the relationships therein continue to strain credibility in ways that Apatow seems to have improved to a great degree, Smith delivers a unique blend of teenage glee and grown up gravitas to his marriage of sweat and sweet, and it can be kind of infectious. You know, like herpes.