Kevin Smith's Jersey Girl

[Jeremy Blackman]

Harry Knowles is not a movie critic. He's a human message board.

[©brad]

yeah but i enjoy his reviews nonetheless. he's got so much energy, you can't help but get excited a little.

[billybrown]

I just got back from this flick a lil while ago and I have to say, those really lame trailers had me worried I was going to be walking into the cheese fest special, but alas, I was pleasantly surprised. Performances all around were good, especially George Carlin who stole every scene, and the little girl was cute and held her own quite well.

Working for this first time in PG land, I was surpised at how funny the film was. Lots of good laughs, and some real funny cameos which I won't spoil. Dialogue was also quite good in that Kevin Smith style, specifically in the scenes with Ben and Liv which have a great rhythm to them and are quite memorable. It was cool the way they reversed roles, where Liv essentailly became the Kevin Smith 'male" character, and where Affleck was more the prototypical, emotional female-type character.

The use of music though was thoroughly nauseating. Every moment there was some scene of emotional catharsis or a life-affirming turning point, some song came on to accompany a really tacky montage of "characters in pain." It was like, we know,  very very sad, "he lost his wife, he's raising a kid by himself, she'll never know her mom", and every other slice of life moment that makes you wonder whether you should laugh or cry. This is the same guy, Kevin Smith, who said how lame and self-indulgent, etc., that Magnolia "Wise Up" Sequence was.  Yikes.

The direction in some spots was also quite weak and student-filmish, i.e., when Ben is told J-Lo died having his kid (what a JLo look-a-like they found w/ that girl though), every musical/emotional montage, and the closing of the film where you know exactly where things were going way early on.

Guess I'm ripping it more than I mean to, but having said all that though, the film had a lot of genuine heart,  laughs, and is a welcome break from that tired and stupid Jay and Silent Bob routine which has grown very old. I think it's a nice mature film for Smith that he can definitely build on. As mentioned before, it's a romantic comedy for guys and had enough good moments to justify a watching (especially if you're a Smith fan) and to override the occasional bout of cheese-infested sentimentality and the  formulaic plot devices that tend to creep into the film.

[ono]

Working for this first time in PG land

I thought it was PG-13?

[billybrown]

Working for this first time in PG land

I thought it was PG-13?

Here in Canada, we don't have all those silly numbers after movie ratings like you wacky, Yankee Doodle Dandees, except for 14A and 18A. We
G, PG, 14A, 18A, and R, if I'm not mistaken.

[MacGuffin]

Working for this first time in PG land

I thought it was PG-13?

It's still a suburb of PG.

[billybrown]

Working for this first time in PG land

I thought it was PG-13?

It's still a suburb of PG.

Exactly, same shit, different pile Ono.

[Banky]

man rottentomatoes is tearing this film a new asshole


so tomorrows the big day and im still really looking forward to this movie regardless of the critics and i really hope that America can give this movie a chance and i will be really dissapointed if it bombs

ohhh well i guess we will all see

heres a few words from kevin about the movie

1) The film's not gonna be a critical hit. It's an extremely sentimental film, and most critics don't like sentiment. Don't expect big, critical kudos this time around (in fact, we may be less well-reviewed than we were on "Strike Back"). The NY Times is gonna shred the flick. LA Times too, I'll bet. EW probably ain't gonna be onboard.

2) These are the movies that are DEFINITELY going to make more than us at the box office this weekend: Dawn of the Dead, The Passion of the Christ, Scooby Doo 2, The Ladykillers, Starsky and Hutch. These are the movies that are PROBABLY gonna make more than us at the box office this weekend: Taking Lives, Secret Window, Hidalgo, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. Acccept it.

3) A killer opening number would be nice, but isn't necessary. We're only opening on 1600 screens this weekend, then going 2000 the weekend after. What we're looking for is longevity: audience word-of-mouth and solid numbers for a few weeks in a row. We've gotten shit-loads of press hits in advance of Friday, and the TV spots are all over the place. And while we won't have many of the critics on our side, if the movie plays as well with audiences as it has been playing in test, marketing, and awareness screenings over the course of the last year, we should glide along nicely on strong word-of-mouth. There's nothing else like it at the box office for the next few weeks, so that's good too.

[Stefen]

Sounds like Smith is psyching himself up for the worst.

[A Matter Of Chance]

I kind of feel like Smith is trying to pull a last minute "Don't listen to the press! Like my movie!" kind of thing, plus the previews do say "critics love Jersey Girl" or something. I kind of thought that Smith was hoping that the critics would really like this movie, but they didn't, so he's just falling back onto "This movie wasn't made for critics" thing. But I still like Smith, I like Clerks, love Chasing Amy, and J&SB Strike Back had some good laughs. I kind of excited to see this one.

[Ghostboy]

When previews say 'critics love so-and-so movie,' they're always referring to the junket junkies at some tiny news imprint/tv station who compete with each other in creating the type of positive quotes that line the advertisements of subpar movies; Leonard Maltin and Larry King are the kings of this type of criticism.

[Banky]

Ebert gave a good review and is the focus of the most recent tv spots

[MacGuffin]

The NY Times is gonna shred the flick. LA Times too, I'll bet.

Los Angeles Times review:
'Jersey Girl' has a bland personality
Kevin Smith's ode to fatherhood mixes Shirley Temple and Lenny Bruce.

Imagine a Shirley Temple movie written and directed by Lenny Bruce — "Little Miss Marker" or "Wee Willie Winkie" — with key plot points involving pornography and masturbation, and you'll get an idea of what writer-director Kevin Smith has come up with in "Jersey Girl."

Smith would probably be the first to say he's hardly a Lenny Bruce, but with films like "Clerks," "Chasing Amy" and "Dogma," not to mention the more forgettable "Mallrats" and "Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back," he has made a career out of being iconoclastic, borderline blasphemous and in your face.

But even bad boys grow up and Smith, now a husband and father who recently lost his own father, has decided it is time for something completely different. Sort of. So he's brought his smartly profane sensibility to the most standard sentimental material imaginable, the kind of film that costars a Temple-esque tot and features not one but two romantic carriage rides through Central Park.

It's a sincere albeit doomed attempt to balance irreconcilables that leads to been-there situations like a husband comforting a pregnant wife who feels she's too fat to attend a glamorous party by assuring her that those svelte rivals are "skinny because they're coked-out whores." The lines can be sharp and some moments amuse, but the story line is so moribund that nothing can bring it back to a rich and full life.

Smith's mix-and-match technique is visible from his opening sequence, which features a parade of cute grade-school kids making risqué remarks about their parents' personal lives. Then little Gertie Trinke (Raquel Castro) takes the stage and narrates an extended flashback that returns us to the days when her parents were dating.

Ollie Trinke (Ben Affleck) is a refugee from New Jersey happy to be New York's youngest and most successful music business publicist. The love of his life is children's book editor Gertrude Steiney, played by Jennifer Lopez. Given that the Affleck/Lopez affair that launched a thousand tabloid covers was in full flower when "Jersey Girl" was shooting, it's nice to report that their on-screen chemistry, brief though it is, is pleasing. It's brief because when two people are that crazy about each other in movies like this one, you know one of them has to die, and a look at the poster tells you its not going to be Ollie.

The bulk of "Jersey Girl" takes place when Gertie is 8 and living back in Jersey because her dad has experienced a reversal of fortune so extreme they're crashing with Ollie's crusty dad, Bart (an energetic George Carlin), a street sweeper who doubles as custodian of the wisdom of the ages.

"Jersey Girl's" press material reports that young Castro, here making her feature debut, was a live wire practically from birth, so it's not surprising that her smile and positive spirit make her the film's most engaging performer.

As for Affleck, he is doing the best he can in a part he's called "the role of a lifetime." But he is such a transparent actor despite his stardom that having to experience him in tears is not a sight for the faint of heart. Fortunately for Affleck he's paired up with Liv Tyler, an actress of similarly unprepossessing style. She plays Maya, a video store clerk who busts our hero for renting pornography despite being a family man. How's that for a cute meet?

Despite that frisson of naughtiness and the occasional smile, "Jersey Girl" is overall too bland to hold our interest. The lessons about What's Really Important In Life that Jersey boy Ollie Trinke has to learn are so preordained, the film needs to have a lot more on the ball than it does to succeed.

One of the film's most engaging aspects, for those who care about these things, is its "inside baseball" qualities. Affleck's pal Matt Damon makes a cameo appearance along with Jason Lee, Will Smith has a pleasant uncredited scene, the voice of Miramax head Harvey Weinstein is heard on the phone, and the writer-director's longtime publicity firm, the Angelotti Co., gets almost as much screen time as Lopez.

"Jersey Girl's" closing credits end with a long list of personal thanks from Smith ("Raquel — Kid, you're a star") that have the pleasantly ingenuous quality of high school yearbook greetings. It would be nice to see the writer-director apply his blessedly individual sensibility to something not quite this ordinary.

[Banky]

http://www.suntimes.com/output/ebert1/wkp-news-jersey26f.html



3 and 1/2 stars! wow

[billybrown]

http://www.suntimes.com/output/ebert1/wkp-news-jersey26f.html



3 and 1/2 stars! wow

Keep in mind, Ebert is a fat slob who's prolly spending more time at the theatre focused on his xtra large, xtra buttered popcorn than the actual movie itself...