The Good Girl (2002)

"The Good Girl" was heavily touted as the film that would help Jennifer Aniston break from her Rachel persona and make the leap to dramatic film actress. There was even talk (however brief) about an Academy Award nomination for her when this film came out. Surprise, surprise, but that didn't happen. And where has Aniston's film career been since? "The Good Girl" is leaps and bounds better than any of Aniston's other ventures into film--bland crap like "Picture Perfect" and that other movie whose name I can't even remember--but it's not a great movie in and of itself.

Aniston does a pretty good job, but you still can't escape the suspicion that she's just playing Jennifer Aniston, albeit a drabbed down version of herself. This movie's greatest asset is its supporting cast, particularly Zooey Deschanel in a very funny, dead pan role as a fellow worker at the Wal-Mart-esquire store Aniston's character works in, and Jake Gyllenhaal, who had begun his trek to stardom the year before in "Donnie Darko." The gods were being kind to Gyllenhaal in 2002, as he got to make out with both Aniston and Catherine Keener ("Lovely and Amazing") in the same year.

"The Good Girl" is certainly worth watching. It captures that nowheresville feeling of small-town America perfectly, the antithesis of every Frank Capra movie on the same subject. Instead of a cosy town where everyone knows your name, these towns are instead full of bored, restless people sitting around waiting for something, anything, to happen.

Grade: B-

Fmovies: This is one of the funniest movies I have ever seen. I was literally laughing so loud when I saw this movie in the theatre that people were getting mad at me. The movie is also unbelievably sad, and if you dont like comedies with sad overtones, this is not the movie for you. This movie is so perfectly written. You care about Justine (Jennifer Aniston), and you can feel her deep rooted sadness for everyday life, and you can just hope that you don't get stuck in a situation like that when you go out on your own. watch this movie more than once, Oscar nods should be given to Jennifer Aniston and Jake Gellynhall, both of their performances are amazing.

(requiem for a dream)

Justine (the gorgeous Jennifer Aniston) is a thirty years old, frustrated and married woman, bored with her monotonous life. She works as a clerk in a supermarket, and none of her dreams has come through. She quit schooling just before going to the college, she got married very young, she got trapped in a small town in a job without any perspective and even her expectation of being mother is not being accomplished. Her husband Phil (John C. Reilly, an excellent and underrated actor) is a house painter, who gets stoned most of the vacant time, as a form of escaping his life, with his colleague and best friend Bubba (Tim Blake Nelson). Their entertainment is watching a noisy TV at night. One day, Justine meets her new colleague Holden Worther (Jack Gyllenhaal), a strange ex-addicted and drunken guy, who wants to be a writer. Justine feels a type of attraction for him, which grows to a crush, ending in an affair. The cuckold and naive Phil does not suspect of the situation. Then, the screenplay presents many plot points, alternating dramatic situations with a very black humor. This is indeed a deep movie, with very well developed characters. Basically all of them have a sort of frustration in life, like all of us, which is revealed along the story. The black humor is proportioned in doses to relieve the tension in many situations. Jennifer Aniston proves that she is an excellent actress, able to conduct and carry out a dense movie. Many persons just know her work as Rachel in `Friends', and just expect her to perform foolish roles. For them, I suggest for example, to watch `The Object of My Affection'. I am very suspicious to write about Jennifer Aniston, since I am a great fan of her, but she has a great performance in this film. Of course, the supporting actors and actresses and the direction are also superb. It is ridiculous the classification of comedy for such a movie. This type of classification certainly misleads the viewer and affects the evaluation. This is a movie that deserves to be watched more than once. My vote is nine.

The Good Girl fmovies. Mike White, writer of The Good Girl, deserves the most credit here. While there is good direction and good performances all around, the writing tops the lot by getting the audience to feel for the characters and to understand their human nature from start to finish. Plus, there is a even handed amount of humor (sometimes from stoners and sometimes from quirks in the store) to go along with the drama.

And the performances- Jennifer Anniston shows she can actually do something other than Friends and portrays small town Justine with her wants, desperation, disgust, and ultimitely fears. Gyllenhaal is as compelling as her passionately crazy co-worker, self based on The Catcher in the Rye if only to himself; Reilly and Nelson give the best performances of the picture (and should've gotten a little more screen time) as pot head painters with aimless destinies.

The Good Girl is a keen portrayal of small town angst at the never-ending, often monotonous and uninspired/unfortunate basis. One of the better dramedies of the year. A-

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. *** from ****

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.