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| 3/27/2004 |
| Jersey Girl: Sinatra, The Boss.. even Bon Jovi hates this movie. |
by Wes Bennett
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After some absolutely great comedies this year like “School of Rock”, “Bad Santa” and “Starsky and Hutch,” the overly sentimental “Jersey Girl” feels like a slap in the face. Just like Adam Sandler and the Farrelly Brothers, Kevin Smith is a filmmaker who once achieved brilliance, but now appears to be past his prime, pumping out movies enjoyed only by their most loyal fans. But unlike the Farrellys and Sandler, Smith has made a film that should alienate his core audience.
This leads me to wonder what kind of legacy Smith will leave behind. A man with should limited creativity, that he choose to recycle the same characters throughout his first five films culminating in “Jay and Silent Bob,” a movie he described as “a 90 minute in-joke where you f*&@ around with your friends on someone else’s dime.” Wow. What inspiring artistic vision.
Though “Dogma” and “Chasing Amy” had their limitations, they were at least edgy and openly tackled taboo subjects such as sex and religion. “Jersey Girl,” is an attempt to make a more wholesome, mainstream movie. Unfortunately Smith has absolutely no concept of restraint and ruins, what is for awhile, a promising story with one the cheesiest endings I have ever seen. In no way does it signal the growth of an artist who is maturing and challenging his audience.
The picture stars Ben Affleck as Ollie, a successful New York music publicist whose wife, Gertrude (Jennifer Lopez), dies after giving birth to their child. Ollie is not prepared to raise his baby daughter on his own and soon suffers a meltdown at a press conference that gets him fired. Ollie moves back home to New Jersey with his widowed dad, Bart (George Carlin), a street sweeper. Seven years later, Ollie is still in New Jersey raising his daughter. He is miserable in his low skilled job and yearns to get back to the city. Complications arise as his daughter does not want to leave Jersey, preferring him to spend all of his time and energy on her.
Affleck, veteran of numerous bad films, is a likable guy when you see him on talk shows or when he insults the New York Yankees. But that doesn’t mean he’s cut out to be a serious actor. Although he shines in scenes when he has to be low key and charming with his daughter, there is a scene when he has to cry over the death of his wife that is absolutely cringe inducing.
Smith had always based comedy on his own personal reality. Now that he has a family, he has decided to write a film about raising children and there is nothing wrong with that in and of itself. But a movie this nice and kind hearted would have had to have been very subtle in order to make it’s point. But Smith couldn’t do that. Instead he pounds us over the head again and again.
Even worse, the film is definitely going to alienate his most hard core fans. The humor is very tame and those who enjoyed the fresh vulgarity of “Clerks” and “Mallrats” will be puzzled by what “Jersey Girl” offers.
It bothers me that Smith still relies so much on dialogue and refuses to write more visually. In almost all of his films, the main character decides to radically alter their behavior because of a profound speech from a supposedly wise character. It’s bad enough to use this technique once, but after five films, one would have thought that Smith’s film making skills would have improved.
A person of far less imagination than Smith would know that having a miserable father, staring into space and wondering what became of the potential for his own life, is no formula for happiness. This is why the ending will not prove satisfying to people who put any kind of serious thought into it.
Hopefully, “Jersey Girl” is nothing more than a manifestation of Smith’s growing pains and he has satisfied his desire to make a family friendly film. The more sensitive Smith will have to provide us with future films as compelling as his older, more vulgar works if he wants to have a future in the industry.
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| "We use words like honor, code, loyalty. We use these words as the backbone of a life spent defending something. You use them as a punchline. I have neither the time nor the inclination to explain myself to a man who rises and sleeps under the blanket of the very freedom I provide, then question the manner in which I provide it." |
- Jack Nicholson
A Few Good Men
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Distributed Beers
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| 5 |
Sierra Nevada Bigfoot |
| 4 |
Guinness Draught |
| 3 |
Newcastle Brown Ale |
| 2 |
Bass Pale Ale |
| 1 |
Samuel Adams Boston Lager |
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