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| As a whole, Good Girl equals bad movie |
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 | | Photo By | | Jennifer Aniston changes her Friends image in The Good Girl |
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Dave's grade: C-
Here is a story about a 30-year-old bored wife who meets a young man where she works and contemplates whether or not to have an affair with him. It's also about small-town life, although it's really more about abnormal, small-town life where the people who live here grow more and more miserable by the minute.
Jennifer Aniston plays the leading role in her best effort to date, one that hardly resembles the character that made her famous, the part of Rachel on the television series Friends.
Without Aniston's performance in this film, there wouldn't be any reason to see it.
The heroine here is Justine (Aniston), who works at the cosmetic desk of the Retail Rodeo, a Kmart ripoff, along with her friend Gwen (Deborah Rush). Gwen later dies from eating a bad batch of blackberries.
Justine lives with her husband (John C. Reilly) Phil, who spends his days as a painter and his nights as a pothead, glued to his couch with his best friend Bubba (Tim Blake Nelson).
At first, Phil's only flaw seems to be smoking pot, and there are other things that he does during the movie that suggests he really loves her.
For instance, when she asks him to fix the television set, he does and when she asks him to go to Bible study with her, he does that, too.
Has she ever tried to ask him to stop doing drugs? Has he ever asked if it bothers her? It seems like the main problem between these two characters is not a lack of love but a lack of communication.
It doesn't seem to bother Justine too much, though, because while at the Retail Rodeo, she develops a fancy for Holden (Jake Gyllenhaal), a co-worker who names himself after the lead character of The Catcher in the Rye. His parents call him Tom.
Holden dropped out of college because of his drinking and it doesn't take long for Justine to realize his immaturity and his flaws.
Justine and Holden decide to have an affair and what do you know, Bubba catches them leaving a motel room and Bubba blackmails Justine into doing something she doesn't want to do, but she does it anyway so that Bubba doesn't tell Phil.
Also in the mix is a weird Retail Rodeo security guard (Mike White), who goes to Bible study, yet who doesn't hesitate to watch people have sex in the store room at work by way of video camera. There's also Jack Field (John Carroll Lynch), the manager of the store and Cheryl, who works the cosmetic counter with Justine, turning people into clowns by using too much of everything.
If you've ever wondered what it would be like if zombies took over the world and became domesticated, taking up jobs in drug stores and living in houses with television sets, The Good Girl gives you a pretty good idea.
The characters here, all but Aniston's, aren't quite zombies, but they're close.
There are a few well written scenes in The Good Girl, but a lot of uncomfortable ones and once the whole thing is finished, I was kind of appalled and left feeling more confused than satisfied.
**** rated R for some laguage and drug content. |
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