How many times have you been told that sex was not the answer? Don’t even bother counting, because we know that each time you thought you could solve something by jumping in bed with someone, in came a caring, but let’s face it, condescending friend who tried to talk you out of it. No matter what your reasons were, your friend had better ones for advising you against sleeping with some just to let off some steam.

But what if sex was actually the answer? Maybe not quite to the mysteries of life, wealth or stardom (even though a quick browse through the tabloids might prove this theory wrong), but to some other things, possibly more important ones. Like love, for example.

Don’t worry, it’s only some food for thought, not an essay question on the consequences of casual sex. And we’re not even the ones giving you something to ponder on over the week-end, Kevin Smith is.

His latest movie “Zack and Miri Make a Porno” is the exact embodiment of this lifelong dilemma that constantly pokes holes in prude or simply more down-to-earth people’s views on sex as a means, as a road to something and not a destination.

When the lead characters decide to sleep together in front of a rolling camera, they do so for a reason. Money. Better yet, the lack of it. Zack and Miri, two high-school friends who share an apartment, come into some cash-flow issues they can’t solve. No running water, no electricity, low-paid jobs, not to mention that all this happens during a cold winter.

Sounds like the perfect setting for some cuddling up next to each other to get the temperature up a bit. Nevertheless, the platonic friends choose sex as their last resort to get some money to pay the bills and consequently make a porno at the coffee-shop where Zack works. After closing hours, of course.

And if desperate times always call for desperate measures, it seems that for the two characters, the desperate measure they appeal to has more than a silver-lining to it. It also comes hand in hand with true love.

In the porno-making process, Zack and Miri discover that what they feel for each other is not exactly what one might call friendship.

Usually, things go the other way around. First come the dates, then the emotional involvement (and maybe the love) and only after, the sex. Let alone the fact that a sex-tape is not really the first thing couples jump to do.

But Kevin Smith, in this production about human relationships (and not about sex, as the director himself has stated), seems to have changed the rules of the game.

Yes, the movie is filled with dirty-talk, boob, gay and panty jokes and also uses the time-immemorial cliché of the high-school reunion where Zack (Seth Rogen) and Miri (Elizabeth Banks) go to prove themselves that, even though they haven’t actually climbed the social ladder, they are still better than the stiff, corporate, married-with-children, dog and picket-fence house former classmates. Still, if “Zack and Miri Make a Porno” manages to get some good laughs bursting from the audience and send the latter home thinking that maybe rules really are made to be broken and that they shouldn’t go looking too far for true love, Kevin Smith can shout: “Cut! Mission accomplished.”

If the Internet is no longer just a highway to porn, it seems that porn, in its turn, is no longer just a highway to easy money. It can also be an unfamiliar road to love, as well.