You may wonder why you feel like you've seen this movie before.  Why?  Because you have.

She may not have had her morning coffee yet, but Miri (Elizabeth Banks) is obviously the latest model in Kevin Smith’s lineup of Really Hot Girls, whose all-American good looks no amount of sleep deprivation can undo.  Then there’s her roommate Zach (Seth Rogen), the mediocre Slacker Hero who we know, before the two of them barely shuffle out of their platonically shared apartment in the opening sequence, that the Really Hot Girl is going to fall for.  Again.

Smith, however, takes this male fantasy to a new extreme.  Not only does his Really Hot Girl not know how hot she is because she has an ugly duckling complex, but, underneath the pink, glossy curve of her Breck girl smile she's not even really a girl.

She's a guy.

Think Michelangelo.  Michelangelo painted Eve over and over again in the garden but every time she still came out an Adam, all brawny biceps and abs.  While Smith's Really Hot Girls don't look like Adams, they still speak with the figurative Adam's apple: "Help me get this shit outta my hair!” Miri instructs Zach. “Just use the water outta the toilet!"

We met this creature before in Chasing Amy, where Smith’s heroine Alyssa captivated Ben Affleck as the ultimate tomboy masquerading beneath a breathy voice and over-the-one-eye blonde mane.  She gets reincarnated as a brunette in Clerks II as Becky and now as a blonde again in Miri, who, with her "dude" peppered dialogue and extra curriculars  --- “Okay! Let's go make a porno!”—  comes off less as the film’s leading lady and more as a wide-eyed, eager 13 year old boy. 

The most alluring thing about these boy-women is that they don’t ask anything from the Slacker Hero except for what he already has to offer, which ironically inspire Zach and his predecessors to shed their Peter Pan shadow for more adult responsibility without ever leaving Neverland: Clerks II’s Dante graduates from clerk to store-owning clerk, Zach from amateur porn star to amateur porn producer.  

The childlike, earnest nature of Smith’s porn star novitiates renders Zach and Miri  more of a romantic comedy than its NC-17 rating would suggest.  The best genre description though is not the romcom but the bromace -- in this case, one that unfolds between a boy and another boy disguised as a girl.

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