Review: Jersey Girl (** 1/2)

JERSEY GIRL
A film review by Steve Rhodes

Copyright 2004 Steve Rhodes

RATING (0 TO ****): ** 1/2


Fresh from their legendary bomb, GIGLI, Ben Affleck and Jennifer Lopez team
up again in one of this year's least anticipated movies, JERSEY GIRL. This
light-weight and sporadically enjoyable romantic comedy is an edge-free film
by writer and director Kevin Smith's angelic twin. Smith's diabolically
delicious dialog is almost non-existent, but every now and then the devilish
Smith, whom we know and love from such sarcastic jewels as CHASING AMY and
JAY AND SILENT BOB STRIKE BACK, sneaks out to give some wickedly funny
lines.



As the story opens, Ollie Trinke (Affleck) is a workaholic executive at a PR
agency in Manhattan. He is just about to marry a less driven but no less
successful book publisher, Gertrude Steiney (Lopez). By the end of the
first act, they will have a child named Gertie, played in later acts by
7-year-old Raquel Castro, an incredibly talented scene-stealer who looks a
lot like Lopez. The first act ends Lopez's involvement in the picture.
Later acts feature Liv Tyler as Maya Harding, a video store employee and
student who is single dad Ollie's potential new love interest.



Ollie has a proclivity for saying horrible things at the worst possible
moments. Denigrating his client and the press as well to a sea of reporters
gets him fired. And saying something equally awful to his daughter crushes
her spirit.



Ollie's first attempts at being a single father are complete disasters.
When his baby daughter screams, he ignores her or yells at his father
(George Carlin) to take care of her. When Ollie's dad balks at being an
unpaid caregiver, Ollie is at lost as to what to do. Still wealthy at the
time, since he hasn't yet lost his big PR job, he is a rich man who has
never heard of the concept of daycare. He also doesn't know how to change a
diaper, etc. The script, which has frequent credibility problems, has Ollie
moving from a penthouse apartment overlooking Central Park to his dad's
rundown New Jersey house, where Ollie gets work as a driver of a street
sweeper. Ollie also switches instantly from a guy who cares nothing about
his daughter to one who cares about nothing else.



As always, the most memorable scenes in Smith's movie concerns conversations
about sex. "What are your intentions?" Ollie asks Brian, as Brian and
Gertie sit nervously on the living room sofa looking at the stern adult.
Ollie caught the two 7-year-olds harmlessly playing doctor with both them
doing nothing more than staring at each other's private parts. He demands
to know if Brian plans on marrying his daughter. This humorous incident is
repeated later with Gertie in the parental role questioning Maya about her
marrying Ollie, after Gertie catches them in something which they had hoped
to be a bit more rigorous than a game of doctor.



The movie's other funny moment comes in an interview that Maya conducts in a
diner. Questioning Ollie about his sex life for her class report, she is
shocked to find that he has had no sex for the past seven years. Well, none
other than his solitary sessions with the adult tapes he sheepishly rents
from her store. "Man can not live on porn alone," she chastises him, as she
takes him off to follow her advice to "get back on the horse, man." It is
just before the mounting that Gertie walks in, which results in her
aforementioned lecture.



The movie ends in the big cliché of a school play that the busy father --
Ollie is going for an interview in order to land another high-paying PR
job. -- has trouble getting to on time. Of course, following the formula,
he'll make it with barely a second to spare. JERSEY GIRL isn't a bad movie,
far from it. But from Kevin Smith we rightly expect better.



JERSEY GIRL runs 1:43. It is rated PG-13 for "language and sexual content
including frank dialogue" and would be acceptable for kids around 12 and up.



The film is playing in nationwide release now in the United States. In the
Silicon Valley, it is showing at the AMC theaters, the Century theaters and
the Camera Cinemas.



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