Starring: Ben Affleck, Liv Tyler,
George Carlin
Cert: 12a
Released:18th June 2004
Ben is a successful publicist in
New York who falls for Jennifer
Lopez, marries, gets pregnant and then she dies giving birth to a daughter. So
far so good. Ben, being your average selfish, yuppie bloke tries to palm his
baby on his dad (Carlin) and continue his busy, hedonistic life with disastrous
results. He loses his job, is shunned by the profession and has to move to
New Jersey with his dad.
Seven years later and he’s a
street cleaner, his daughter is beyond cute and he starts talking to the girl
who works at the video store
(
Tyler
). Then he gets the chance to
get a job back in the city which would disrupt everyone around him.
This is the latest offering from
Kevin Smith and the team that gave us Jay
& Silent Bob Strike Back et al and his first (and last?) detraction from
the characters and knob joke humour that has made him popular.
Jersey
girl has its humorous moments and the acting is good (Carlin specifically) but
it is laced with every plot contrivance ever imagined. Busy father forced to
look after child, does so well but doesn’t see things going wrong (the cardinal
sin of missing the child’s pageant) when he gets chance to return to old life.
He gets to tell child off and then child gets to use same speech back later.
Moral: why would you want money when you have a cute kid? Ugh, it hurts.
I am a big Smith fan and that’s
why I am negative about this film. Objectively, I suppose, it’s a lot better
than any of the formulaic rom-coms around at the moment. So go see it if you
have no expectations and want a ‘nice’, funny film. Don’t see this film if
you’re expecting a couple of doped up bums doing nothing and talking about
gay-monkey-sex.
