THE TROTSKY

Written and Directed by Jacob Tierney

Starring Jay Baruchel, Emily Hampshire, Ricky Mabe, Colm Feore and Saul Rubinek

Anne Bronstein: Leon! Supper!
Leon Bronstein: One minute!
Anne Bronstein: You can finish your little revolution after dinner.

If you met a teenager who genuinely believed that he was the reincarnation of the Bolshevik revolutionary and Marxist theorist, Leon Trotsky, what do you think you would do with him? Do you think that you would applaud his obvious delusions and allow him to wander around through life sharing his beliefs with everyone he meets? Or would you simply sit him down and set him straight about how the world really works? And if that didn’t work, you could always have him committed, I suppose. If you’re Montreal writer/director, Jacob Tierney though, you would take this guy and throw him up on the big screen for everyone to learn from and you would call it THE TROTSKY.

Montreal actor, Jay Baruchel, plays young Leon Bronstein, the potentially disturbed character I was just referring to, and Tierney should forever be in his debt for this. Tierney’s script is certainly funny but the subject matter itself has such great potential to be entirely missed by most audiences. It may be a pseudo-intellectual teen comedy but I would wager that a fair amount of adults are not that well-versed in Russian politics, let alone the adolescent demographic THE TROTSKY is partly aimed at. Baruchel sells it hard though and with so much conviction and charisma that you can’t help but want to see just how far he will take his crusade to vanquish fascism at the public school he just started attending. His passion for the part and ability to balance the character’s brilliance and insecurity simultaneously bridges the gap between the audience and their potential lack of knowledge on the prevailing subject at hand.

While watching THE TROTSKY, I never really understood why anyone allowed this kid to get away with half of what he was trying to pull off. I also never grasped why no one made the connection between Leon’s antics and his obvious issues with his father (Saul Rubinek). Granted, if anyone did actually call Leon out on his issues, then we would not have been taken down Tierney’s often hilarious fantasy. And, perhaps more importantly, I would still know absolutely nothing about Leon Trotsky.

ZACK AND MIRI MAKE A PORNO

Written and Directed by Kevin Smith
Starring Seth Rogen, Elizabeth Banks, Jason Mewes, Craig Robinson and Ricky Mabe


Zack Brown: Everybody wants to see anybody fuck. I hate Rosie O’Donnell but if somebody said, “I got a tape of Rosie O’Donnell getting fucked stupid,” I’d be like, “Why the fuck aren’t we watching that right now?”

Just in time for Halloween, one of the original independent filmmakers, Kevin Smith, gives us something truly frightening … Seth Rogen in a porno. No offence to Seth; I think he’s cuddly and all but porn material, I think not. Or maybe I’ve just been out of the straight porn-watching world for so long that this is what porn has come to. That said, I doubt I’ll be making a trip to my local video shop later to catch up on everything I’ve missed. What’s that? I don’t have to leave my home for this sort of fare anymore? It is all readily available online at the click of my mouse? And what? I’m supposed to be talking about Smith’s latest mild chuckle fest, ZACK AND MIRI MAKE A PORNO? I thought we were discussing film worth leaving the house for. ZACK AND MIRI is not that film. Maybe you could download it, I guess.


Zack and Miri may be making a porno but it is Kevin Smith making another lazy film that we should be focusing on. See, Smith is hoping that his sensational premise is enough to get you laughing ecstatically. He is primarily hoping for this because this way he can pass off his tired characters and simple jokes as something brand new, something no one has ever tackled in film before. Actually, that is giving him too much credit. The truth of the matter is that Kevin Smith is one of the most overrated filmmakers making movies today. He’d probably be the first to agree with me. This is because Smith doesn’t really care about his work and you can feel it in every cliché his characters exist and every joke he sets up. How else can you explain married couple characters who yell at each other incessantly and complain even more so about how horrific and sexless marriage is? Or a party sequence where the camera doesn’t move while we jump cut from one dancing fool to the next in full frame? And how can anyone these days justify using the word “faggot” as a meaningless insult, tossed around irresponsibly? Limited is the first word that comes to my mind.


Getting back to Zack and Miri (Rogen and the luminous Elizabeth Banks), they are the most enjoyable and charismatic things about this film. Zack and Miri have been friends forever and never have they crossed that scary line and stepped into the realm of sex between friends. They live together, if you want to call their situation living. They’re months behind on their rent; their electricity and water have been shut off; and neither one has a job that can actually get them out of this mess they’ve found themselves in. Naturally, they turn to the world of pornography for salvation. After all, they just found out that they have access to hundreds of contacts on their high school alumni mailing list that will no doubt jump at the chance to see this infamously platonic twosome finally get it on. I don’t know about you but if I was so down on my luck that I needed to make porn to bail myself, I’m pretty positive that the high school acquaintances that teased and taunted me at my most fragile moments would not be the first people I would be peddling my wares to. In fact, they would be right up there with my mom.


The irony of ZACK AND MIRI MAKE A PORNO is that Kevin Smith should feel right at home with the kinds of lower production values pornography calls for. In fact, I think I may have seen amateur porn that is subtler and more original than this film. It is not without its charm or its laughs but ZACK AND MIRI MAKE A PORNO is as forgettable as most of Smith’s work and not nearly as intriguing as actual porn.