The Good Girl

Jennifer Aniston excels as small town cashier, stifled in a rudderless marriage and miserable at her boring job, who has an affair with a younger co-worker, leading to a series of confounding personal events. Black comedy is initially bright and biting, subtle about its comedic elements and characters while gently satirizing the middle class aesthetic. Unfortunately, the film takes a wrong turn late in the second-half and never quite recovers, leading to an emotionally unsatisfying finish. The performers are all terrific, especially John C. Reilly as Aniston's pot-smoking husband; but, as the screenplay loses steam so do the actors, and the final events are mechanically offbeat--engineered to be quirky. **1/2 from ****

Years ago I had a conversation with some young guy who worked on the loading docks. He was frustrated by his life, felt inarticulate and incapable of escaping his plight or of really doing anything with his life. He had the wish but not the talent to express himself through art and felt he had nothing to look forward to. I thought of him while watching The Good Girl, a movie about a very ordinary person trapped in a hum drum existence.

I've noticed some discussion in these reviews as to whether The Good Girl is a comedy or drama, and I would suggest people stop trying to label the movie. The Good Girl clearly isn't trying to be either, but simply a movie that captures the life of someone who feels trapped, portraying both the drama and comedy inherent in life. It's a small, studied, intelligently written movie that's well worth watching. Don't worry about what it is, just watch it and take it the way you take life, not as a comedy or drama but just as what it is.

Jennifer Anniston gives a beautiful, heartfelt performance in `The Good Girl,' a film totally in tune with the rhythms of everyday life. Anniston' Justine Last is just one of the many people inhabiting this Deep South, Bible Belt town who find themselves leading lives of quiet desperation, imprisoned by the dreary sameness of their daily routines. Justine works at one of those generic five-and-dime drug stores that so define the culture of Middle America. Yet, Justine's job and work environment are not the only sources of her frustration. She is also married to a well-meaning but dull blue collar worker who would rather spend the evening sitting on the sofa getting stoned with his partner than engage in any meaningful relationship-building with his wife. At the age of 30 then, Justine is ripe for some kind of life-changing experience when in walks Holden Worther, an introverted, obviously disturbed young co-worker who sees in Justine the very soul mate he has been searching for all his life, a person who will understand him and share his hatred for the life they are both leading.

`The Good Girl' is really about the contrast between what we would like our lives to be and what they really are. Justine knows that the `easy' choice would be to pull up stakes and simply run away with Holden, abandoning a town, a marriage and a husband she has come lately to both abhor and despise. Yet, something keeps Justine rooted to the spot, something that makes her understand that any decision she makes will end up hurting someone in the end besides herself. Perhaps she sticks around because she realizes that, for all his faults, her husband is, in reality, a pretty decent guy overall and that he really does love her. Perhaps she also realizes that Holden is more mentally disturbed than she is willing to admit and that whatever life she might have with him would only mean exchanging one set of troubles for another. Credit the Mike White screenplay with exploring the complex nature of the film's characters and relationships. We never quite know where the story is headed or how all the issues will get resolved - if at all. As in real life, the story here keeps bumping up against new and ever more challenging complications and, because we can identify with the messiness, we are eager to go along with it wherever it chooses to take us. The film also does a fine job showing how life takes wholly unexpected turns at times, such as when a fairly major character dies unexpectedly. The casual suddenness of the death throws us for a loop since we so rarely see death portrayed that way in the movies.

Miguel Arteta's deadpan, matter-of-fact directorial style brings out the black comedy richness inherent in the material. Amid all the pain and sadness, there are a surprising number of genuine laughs in the film as we see our own lives reflected in the people and incidents there on the screen. Actually, the film reminds us a bit - in its music, its use of voiceover narration and its unromanticized view of rural life - of Terrance Malick's great 1973 film, `Badlands,' a landmark in independent American filmmaking.

Anniston, who is probably in every scene in the film, carries the picture with her rich and highly empathetic performance. Even though her character is a woman slowly becoming deadened to the world around her, she still retains that spark of life and that absurd hope for the future that make her worthy to be the centerpiece of an intimate drama such as this one. Jake Gyllenhaal makes Holden both strangely appealing and a little frightening, so that, as Justine does, we come to admire his `uniqueness' of spirit (he has adopted his name from the main character of his favorite book `Catcher in the Rye') yet fear his increasing possessiveness. John C. Reilly as Justine's husband, Phil, and Deborah Rush as Gwen Jackson, Justine's sometime confidante at the store, also provide memorable, telling performances. In fact, there is nothing less than a superb performance in the entire film.

The question of whether or not Justine is really `a good girl' is, as it should be, left up to the individual viewer to decide. Some may feel she is; others may feel she's not. What really matters, though, is that `The Good Girl' doesn't try to impress us with the slickness that generally defines mainstream commercial filmmaking. Instead it lets its drama unfold in an unforced, believable manner, so that even its moments of greatest absurdity seem somehow strangely real and lifelike. It is a film that, in its own quiet, subtle way, manages to get under your skin - and keeps you thinking for a long time after you leave the theater.

Jennifer Anniston stars as Justine in "The Good Girl", though she is far from being good in this film. Justine is bored with the monotony and lack of direction in her life. She is especially bored with her husband, Phil (John C. Reilly)--a nice but vacuous guy who'd rather smoke pot and drink beer than anything else. So does she go to her husband about her feelings of inadequacy? Nope. Instead she begins an affair with a co-worker--a disaffected goth-like guy named Holden (Jake Gyllenhaal). Of course this all ends up in HUGE complications--and what exactly these are you'll have to learn for yourself if you see this movie.

This film about dissatisfaction is well made but also very different. There is no nice object lesson in the film nor are the characters particularly nice folks you could are about when their lives go out of control. It also seems to indicate that when you are in trouble, the best course of action is to lie your butt off! Additionally, horrible things happen to nice people and jerks sometimes land on their feet just fine! Obviously, this film is not one you'll want to show the kids due to these lessons...as well as the sexual behavior. If you love Jennifer Anniston and dark humor (though this isn't exactly a comedy), then the film is clearly for you. Others might find it hard to really care about the film or the characters--making it an odd but skippable curio.

Justine works at a supermarket in a small town and is married to her underachieving painter husband. She feels trapped and unable to deal with the stagnant pool that is her life. When a mysteriously dark young man begins to work at the supermarket she gets involved with him as a way out of her normal life into something more exciting. However things get much more exciting that she expected.

Rented by my wife as she searched for something in a sort of comedy/drama. As always she has pretty good judgement and better taste than I give her credit for. I had heard reasonable things about this film but I wasn't sure if it would just be another Friends clone comedy. Happily my fears were not realised and this film is actually quite a brave shot at being a character study rather than another one of her hollow rom-coms. The plot looks at an ordinary woman who is living a life that is far below what she thought she wanted. It is not spectacular but it works well on this level. We see her pursue her supposed dream but only getting sucked into other things that she doesn't want for her life. Not all the drama works as well as others and some twists and scenes are a little too much for such a low-key film.

The film has some laughs in it, but not so many that it hurts the main drama of the film. At times the comedy works well to compliment the main thread but occasionally it is misjudged and threatens to take away from it a bit. The fact that the film is quite down beat and low-key might put some off as it doesn't really set the screen on fire, however what it does do well is develop the character of Justine as you watch the film.

As such the film does rely on the acting and the majority of it is very good. As much as I dislike her performance in Friends (and thus every repeat she's done in the films), Aniston does very well here and her Justine is as far from her Rachael as is needed. Likewise her character is as far from any life she has ever lived, but she brings it to life and does develop well while still keeping it down to earth and relatable. Reilly and Nelson have good roles that get better as the film goes on and they give good performances. Nelson has the harder job of keeping his character within some sort of relatable reality and he does it well. Gyllenhaal's character is harder to get and is not treated as well by the film, but in essence he is the driver for Justine's journey and is developed well enough to do that. He plays him well and, with Donnie Darko, is in danger of only getting the `weirdo kid' roles.

Overall this is a good film that is maybe too downbeat and understated to be really called enjoyable. It is good to see a Hollywood star make a film that is driven by her character and she rises to the challenge and gives a performance that, although not earth shattering, is certainly better than all the stuff she's been doing of late.