Uma Garota em Nova York

I saw this movie a few years ago and I loved it , and it gave me all these butterflies.I saw it again today and it still has the same effect on me, as a matter of fact I felt it more and more, and yes it still DOES give me butterflies,just watching it. It didn't differ, I thought it would be like everything else in life, you remember it better than it really was, but it was just as good.Basically it's a love story about 2 different people who aren't really as different as they think , a Jersy girl who always dreams of the city and moving up and a city boy who was once from the Bronx and did move up and would do anything to never go back. It's romantic, sweet, funny, and heartfelt. I think it's most girls fairy tale in real life setting. It'll either make you feel good or it'll make you want to cry, but either way it's great Friday night movie.

On the surface of it, this movie is nothing special. However, there is something about the direction and the perfect casting that sways you to believe it. There are moments when you are wondering where the story will lead (but you're usually wrong) and the whole focus is on something that touches us all, whether we're from New Jersey, New York, London or Namibia: class, upbringing, love and prejudice, friendship, loyalty, and truth. Toby (Jami Gertz) plays a straightforward, if somewhat naive, go-getter with a big heart, and manages to steer clear of our disbelief, perhaps anchored somewhat by her down-to-earth girl buddies. The romance is touching, the bitter conflict of Sal's (Dylan McDermott) 'correct' relationship is deftly portrayed, and, sorry, but I have to say it, Gertz's beauty is dominant (but hey, I'm just a bloke). Lightweight with a Big Message for us all.

I just saw this movie for the first time yesterday and I must say it was SWEET! I absolutely adored it - romantic, funny and with a great ending. PLUS - girls - super Practice hottie Dylan McDermott is the leading man...WHO could ask for more????? Two thumbs up!

Here's the odd thing about this quirky little film -- its "happy ending" completely undercuts the happy ending the heroine is looking for.

Toby (Gertz) is a Jersey Girl looking for a GQ kind of guy -- a non-Guido with money, nice clothes and good manners who will take her away from it all. Sal (McDermott) is a Queens Guy who's made it big in Manhattan and is dating Social Register material. Toby wants Sal, Sal wants Society, but in the end Toby and Sal get each other. But what happens in order for this to occur? Sal trashes his well-paying career, is humiliated by his girlfriend, intentionally wrecks the Mercedes that first caught Toby's eye,and probably won't long be hanging on to that nice apartment overlooking Central Park. He rejects what it takes to be Manhattan material in order to be with his Jersey Girl -- he re-embraces his Queens roots.

So how does this make him different than the Guidos Toby has been fleeing in the first place? Are we supposed to believe that they're what she really wanted all along, now that she's ended up with one?

The toughest thing about this for me was the endless cliche about what Jersey Girls are like in the first place. I defy anyone to find a 20-something in, say, Short Hills NJ who would dress, act, talk, think like the stereotypes depicted in the film. It's a movie about Jersey Girls with a kind of Philip Roth-like self-hatred about being from Jersey. Toby isn't smarter or more stylish than her friends -- she just wants someone with money. That is supposed to ennoble her? In the end, she doesn't get the guy with the money anyway -- perhaps as fitting punishment for her greediness?

If so, then who's the heroine of this movie, anyway?

Jersey Girl is a great romantic comedy. The tagline calls it a Cinderella Story With Big Hair and that it is, but Jamie Gertz's Tobey gets the man of her dreams without the help of a fairy godmother. Tobey lives in New Jersey and dreams of a better life that doesn't include her dead end job and evenings at the Bendix diner with her girlfriends. She thinks she'll find that better life by picking up a guy at the local Mercedes dealer...see the movie to find out what happens. As the opening credit song states "Jersey Groove, She's got a Jersey Groove"