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JERSEY GIRL
by Peter Sobczynski

March 26, 2004

(out of 4 stars)

FILM CREDITS: Written and directed by Kevin Smith. Starring Ben Affleck, Liv Tyler, Raquel Castro, George Carlin, Jason Biggs and Jennifer Lopez.

"Jersey Girl", the latest film from writer-director Kevin Smith, the man behind such Sundance-era classics as "Clerks", "Chasing Amy" and "Dogma", is his most blatant attempt to date to create a crowd-pleasing hit. Instead of filling the screen with lengthy discussions of sexual mores, theology, pop-culture minutiae and dick-and-fart jokes, he has come up with a PG-13 family-friendly comedy-drama with cute kids, wise-but-irascible grandparents and an ever-present Greek chorus of buddies straight out of Sitcom 101. The end result reminded me a little bit of how I felt after watching "School of Rock", another film in which an indie directing icon, Richard Linklater, decided to test out the mainstream waters; I enjoyed it quite a bit but I must admit that I hope that it proves to be a digression instead of a signal of a new direction.

"Jersey Girl" has gotten an inordinate amount of pre-release publicity, especially for a Kevin Smith film not involving organized religion. No, the hype has centered on the fact that this was the second (and presumably last) film to co-star Ben Affleck and Jennifer Lopez as an on-screen couple. After the detonation of "Gigli", however, Miramax Pictures, which had once planned to sell the film on the strength of the couple, decided to use an entirely different approach; they began to make sure that everyone knew going into the film that even though the film begins with the courtship and marriage of hot-shot New York music publicist Ollie Trinke (Affleck) and Gertrude Steiney (Lopez), Lopez’s character would die in childbirth no more than 12 minutes into the film. Although I suppose that approach makes sense from a business standpoint, especially since "Gigli" is still Hollywood’s whipping-boy, but the advance knowledge does little to help the film itself. Not only does it rob the story of one of its key dramatic turning points (instead of being sucker-punched by the death, we cannot help but mentally start ticking down Lopez’s screen time the minute she appears) but it distracts from the realization that the much-vilified couple actually do generate some chemistry in their brief appearance together. (Lopez, in fact, hasn’t been this appealing since her work in "Out of Sight".)

The grieving Ollie moves back in with his father (George Carlin) in suburban New Jersey and foists the baby, a daughter named Gertie, off on him while throwing himself into his work. Eventually, his Dad gets upset at Ollie for neglecting his own child and takes off before Ollie can leave her with him for the day. This forces Ollie to bring her to work, inevitably on a day when he is holding a press conference for one of his upcoming clients (no fair revealing who). Frazzled by the braying press corps out front, the crying, messy baby backstage and the client nowhere to be found, Ollie finally snaps and loudly excoriates both the journalists and his client, whose artistic ambitions he rudely mocks. Insulting the former may be forgivable for a publicist but the latter is a mortal sin in the business. Ollie loses his job and is blackballed from the industry; the only job interviews he can get are with people who have no intention of hiring him but who want to see if he is really that Ollie Trinke.

The film then jumps ahead seven years-Ollie is working on a road crew and still living at home with Dad and raising Gertie (Raquel Castro) while dreaming of regaining the lifestyle that he once had. Although nothing much happens to him, a couple of complications force him to make a decision of who he is and who he wants to be. One is professional-a former underling (Jason Biggs) is now in a position to hire him, a move that Gertie opposes because she doesn’t want to leave the life she knows. One is personal-Gertie thinks that her father is lonely and more or less decides that Maya (Liv Tyler), the cute grad student working at the local video store, would be perfect for him. Ollie, who hasn’t dated at all since his wife’s death isn’t so sure, but eventually finds his defenses beginning to crumble-as most anyone’s would when confronted with the vision of a girl who looks like Liv Tyler and can get you free DVD rentals to boot.

Although "Jersey Girl" contains any number of big laughs (one of the funnier subplots involves Gertie’s obsession with "Sweeney Todd" and "Cats", the latter of which is described by Ollie as "the second-worst thing to happen to New York"), it quickly becomes clear that Smith is less interested in rehashing the ribald comedy that has become his stock-in-trade (neither Jay & Silent Bob nor trademarks like "Snootchie Bootchies" make an appearance). Instead, his work here is closer to the quieter mixture of character-based humor and drama in "Chasing Amy", still his best film to date. Even though the storyline isn’t the most gripping to ever hit the screen (much of the climactic conflict comes from Ollie having to choose between going to an important job interview or attending Gertie’s school recital), it works because Smith has written genuine characters instead of goofy caricatures.

He also gets a lot of help from his game cast. Although Ben "Phantoms" Affleck has, to put it charitably, been in more than his share of bad movies over the last few years, he proves here that when forced to actually act instead of merely coasting by on his movie-star charm, he is more than capable of doing good, sturdy work; this is his best, most sincere performance since "Chasing Amy". As for Liv Tyler, she is an actress who, although almost unspeakably beautiful (especially when wearing the glasses she had on at the Oscars), has never done much for me on screen despite working with some of the world’s top directors (including Oliver Stone, Bernardo Bertolucci and Robert Altman) but she has finally won me over with her work her. Even though she is playing another version of the typical Kevin Smith fantasy girl (hyper-verbal, perfectly comfortable discussing comic books and porn and also willing to offer a lonely guy a "mercy jump" at a moment’s notice), she makes Maya into an intensely likable character and she has one scene (where she is being faced down by Gertie after being caught in a semi-compromising position with Ollie) that is just about perfect. In the other lead roles, George Carlin is surprisingly sweet as Ollie’s dad and Raquel Castro is a real find as Gertie; she lacks the polish that most child performers have and instead comes off like a real little kid.

On the other hand, some of Smith’s other attempts at mature filmmaking are less successful. While "Chasing Amy" felt completely free and unforced, there are times when "Jersey Girl" feels a little too restrained for my tastes; while it lacks the silliness of his other works, it also lacks the subversive edge that they also contained. There are other moments when Smith seems a little unsure of himself and tries to cover himself by using tear-jerking music; instead of letting a scene in which Ollie and Gertie reconcile after a sad argument develop its own emotions, he papers over the soundtrack with Bruce Springsteen’s "My City of Ruins" to get the tears going. In his most perverse move, Smith has decided to face one of the recurring criticisms of his filmography-the complete lack of visual style-by hiring Vilmos Zsigmond, one of the greatest cinematographers of all time ("McCabe & Mrs. Miller", "Close Encounters of the Third Kind" and "The Last Waltz" being only three of his many highlights), only to have him spend most of the time shooting in and around a ramshackle house in suburban Jersey. The results are pretty enough but don’t really add much to the proceedings; a rougher style might have actually been more appropriate, especially for the scenes after Ollie’s downfall.

Those problems aside, "Jersey Girl" is sweet and funny and there are a few moments when Smith’s snarkier side makes a welcome appearance (such as the bored Catholic-school teacher who compliments a student for his "excellent droning"). However, I must confess that I hope that he moves back to the edgier humor that he made his bones with in the first place. I’m not saying that he should direct nothing but Jay & Silent Bob movies for the rest of his life (that would just be kind of pathetic), but he has a flair for writing dialogue that is rude, hilarious and savvy about how the minds of over-educated, hyper-articulate people work when they have too much free time on their hands and nothing else to challenge them (wondering, for example, if the killing of the workers building the Death Star in "Return of the Jedi" constituted a war crime). "Jersey Girl", for all of its wit and insight, is a film that is fairly indistinguishable from other films of its type (such as "About a Boy"). To suppress his gifts in order to make himself seem like a more serious filmmaker would be just as creatively limiting in my book as if he spent his time cranking out nothing but variations on "Clerks" for the next few years.

-- PETER SOBCZYNSKI

Copyright © 2004 Peter Sobczynski
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While the views expressed by Peter Sobczynski do not necessarily reflect the views of Criticdoctor.com, the Critic Doctor will occasionally examine Mr. Sobczynski's film reviews to bring forth an honest examination of those views expressed.