Very Good Girls

Silly movie about two girls who throw themselves at a boy they barely know.

I was expecting much more from this than I got when I finished watching it.

Being a long time fan of Dakota Fanning, as I suspect her performances are far above the average from girls her age and especially from her era, I was very excited to see her in a more 'mature' type of movie.

Well, I can't really say I was disappointed with the acting from the cast. I guess even that guy who played the street artist was o.k. but I was not satisfied with the development of the film. The movie was slow and then when it was almost finishing they threw it all at once and maybe it was a ~surprising~ ending once I wasn't expecting it but I was not pleased as I thought it rather silly, to be quite honest.

They were dealing with an adult theme at first which requires an adult reaction from all of the circumstances dealt in the movie and then at the very ending of it they just decided to wrap it all up with a rather silly reaction from the characters so us 'the public/audience' would be happy and content. Just typically clichè Hollywood ending while I would have preferred a million times a more realistic type of closing I guess.

And I just say so because this looks to me as an Indie film in which we generally get a more human response to human emotions played on screen (as well as in foreign films).

Of course, I know the old saying 'you can't always get what you want' but I think it's unfair to the public if they promote the movie a certain way and the final result is completely different from that. I mean that even in what concerns the trailer, the poster, every single advertising thing they do. It just has to be fair to their final public otherwise you can't even trust the filmmakers anymore because they are obviously just thinking about an easy way to cash in at your expenses.

I can't really give you more details because I'd have to tell you how it ends but watch it if you really feel like, it's NOT a complete waste of time because as I've said the characters are well portrayed by the whole cast and I can positively say now that I'll keep looking for more Dakota Fanning and Liz Olsen works in the future, they are far above the average and always deserving a much larger recognition for their roles in almost everything they do. 6/10

Very Good Girls has somehow managed to get a truly noteworthy and remarkable cast in spite of being a most mediocre, humdrum and unremarkable film itself.

The movie is about two best girl friends during their last summer together in New York before they go off to two different colleges in the fall. As the title implies, they've been "Very Good Girls" in high school and are not overly experienced in some aspects of life making them conclude that they should lose their virginity before heading off to school. Their friendship is tested over the summer by various things -- work, family, uncertainty, tragedy -- but most of all by their mutual attraction to a handsome street artist they meet and befriend.

Dakota Fanning (I Am Sam) and Elizabeth Olsen (Martha Marcy May Marlene) play besties Lily and Gerry with Boyd Holbrook (Milk) playing their object of affection who ends up favoring one of the girls to the other. Fanning and Olsen are two of the best young working actresses in Hollywood today and I do not question their talent at all; but Olsen's five year age differential is highly apparent here making the casting in this film ever-so-slightly distracting. Richard Dreyfus (Jaws), Ellen Barkin (Sea of Love), Clark Gregg (The Avengers) and Demi Moore (Ghost) play parents of the two girls while Peter Sarsgaard (An Education) co-stars as Lily's boss and Kiernan Shipka (Sally in 'Mad Men') as her younger sister.

The first-time director, Naomi Foner, just happens to be the mother of the Gyllenhaal siblings (Jake and Maggie) which most likely helps explain why this talented cast (Sarsgaard is Foner's son-in-law) signed onto such a pedestrian, over-done script.

The story is nothing special -- and has been told many times -- but the acting in Very Good Girls is "Very Good" and solid. Everyone involved here is singularly better than the film as a whole.

First-time directors don't typically draw a cast with this much potential and talent. For Very Good Girls, Naomi Foner has managed to snag two of the hottest young actresses in the business right now - Dakota Fanning and Elizabeth Olsen - and surrounded them with the likes of Richard Dreyfuss, Demi Moore, Ellen Barkin and Clark Gregg. The more cynical among us would put this casting coup down to Foner's Hollywood connections: she's penned a few screenplays in her time, but is best known as the mother of thespian siblings Jake and Maggie Gyllenhaal. It's a shame that the final product doesn't dispel these suspicions. The film's awkward love/lust triangle never really convinces, and Very Good Girls spends most of its running time meandering aimlessly through the lives of characters who remain stubbornly opaque and unlikeable.

Lilly (Fanning) and Gerry (Olsen) are best friends who've grown up together, taking refuge in each other's houses when life gets too complicated in their own homes. It's their final summer together, and both girls make a pact to lose their virginity before Lilly goes off to college. Enter David (Boyd Holbrook), an artist who enchants both girls with his good looks and charm. As Gerry develops an outsized crush on David, Lilly plunges into a relationship with him - one that she awkwardly keeps a secret from her best friend. When tragedy strikes, Lilly is overcome by guilt, and the life-long friendship that binds the two girls together is sorely tested.

The trouble with Very Good Girls is that it's built around a tired old trope - two girls fight and fall out over the love of one guy - but fails to find anything refreshing to say about it. Foner's screenplay, for all that it's written by a woman, gives little to no real insight into either girl. Lilly, in particular, feels like a hollow shell drifting through the paces of her narrative, never really connecting with either David or her sketchy, amorous boss Fitzsimmons (Peter Sarsgaard - Foner's son-in-law). It doesn't help that David, as played by the stoically colourless Holbrook, is a walking cliché - in a scene meant to pass for deeply romantic, he actually makes Lilly read him poetry by Sylvia Plath in his dingy artist's loft.

Far more interesting are the home lives Foner has constructed around the two girls. Lilly struggles to come to terms with her father Edward (Gregg) cheating on her uptight mother Norma (Barkin), and migrates to Gerry's considerably more cheery, argumentative home, presided over by the loving but loud Danny (Dreyfuss) and Kate (Moore). There's so much more here to be explored: the way the two families intersect, and how these connections feed into the girls' friendship, lives and personalities. Unfortunately, Foner shoves it all into the background, focusing instead on the unfortunate love/lust triangle that's sprung up around Lilly, Gerry and David.

Foner's cast is, at least, worth the watch, although they don't quite manage to completely salvage the film or their characters. Fanning plays Lilly as tremulously lost, and Olsen lends her own charms to an otherwise paper-thin character who feels more like a plot device than a person. Barkin comes off best out of the entire adult cast, unearthing a little of the sorrow that haunts a woman whose husband has been conducting an affair in their own home.

It should come as no surprise to anyone who watches Very Good Girls that the movie was written twenty years ago. In many ways, the film feels hopelessly outdated. Foner makes minor edits to the script to update it to the present, which largely involve Lilly never charging her mobile phone so that she can only be contacted on a landline. But, in the larger scheme of things, the film seems out of touch with the girls of its title, miring them in adolescent angst over the same boy while failing to make them stand on their own as characters.

Emotionally complex. A great, realistic portrayal of the challenges of a troubled family life and of love and friendship. People make mistakes, and mistakes have to be forgiven, is what this movie seems to say. This movie will have you laughing, crying, suspicious, angry and happy until the very end. It didn't really seem to me that the girls actually made a pact. That would be my main complaint about the plot. They did talk about losing their virginity, but didn't really make any plans. Other than that, a really good movie.