A week after a bad waiter first postponed seeing this movie, and after a cold bug postponed seeing Quantum of Solace, the missus and I finally caught the latest Kevin Smith flick. I was down for this movie pretty early on since it combined Kevin Smith, Seth Rogen and some other Apatow players, Elizabeth Banks, and a story about porn. I mean, what more could a fella want, right?

The movie ended up being funny, but I can’t help but thinking it was less than the sum of all of its awesome parts. Rogen was funny, Banks is great as always, but neither of them felt like they were delivering their strongest performances. The supporting cast was also good (Brandon “Superman” Routh and Craig “Daryl from The Office” Robinson were my personal favorites), but it felt like they weren’t as great as your typical Apatow or Smith secondary characters.

I think the main problem with this movie was that the Kevin Smith-esque sex-obsessed dialogue didn’t quite fit with the Judd Apatow-esque stories with heart felt like two separate entities. Which is a shame, because had the two blended better, I think the movie would have been much stronger. I remember reading an interview with Seth Rogen where he said that the style he was more used to, working within the Apatow-style, involves a lot of improv, which is different from the long monologues that Kevin Smith is famous for. The styles are different, and both work fine on their own, but they just didn’t gel right together. Smith loves to be dirty, and this movie’s over-the-top crassness didn’t bother me, but I also couldn’t help but feel that some of the material was just trying too hard to push the envelope, instead of allowing it to happen naturally. And the Apatow movies are known for having love stories that feel incredibly real and genuine, but the Zack and Miri romance just felt hokey and predictable.

And though it is no fault of the movie, I also couldn’t help but feel that a lot of the funniest things in the movie were already spoiled by advance commercials and trailers. It always sucks when that happens, but for a really rich comedy, you’d think there would be more stuff that wouldn’t make the commercials, especially considering how raunchy some of the material was.

All in all, the movie had its share of fun and funny moments, but I was still let down considering all of the potential it seemed to have going in.