director/screenwriter
Kevin Smith
producer
Scott Mosier
cinematographer
Vilmos Zsigmond
music
James L. Venable
editor
Scott Mosier
Kevin Smith
cast
Ben Affleck (Ollie Trinke)
Liv Tyler (Maya)
Raquel Castro (Gertie Trinke)
George Carlin (Bart Trinke)
Jennifer Lopez (Gertrude Steiney)
Jason Biggs (Arthur Brickman)
Mike Starr (Block)
Stephen Root (Greenie)
Jennifer Schwalbach (Susan)
Jason Lee (PR Exec #1)
Matt Damon (PR Exec #2)
mpaa rating: PG-13
running
time: 102m
u.s.
release: 3/26/04
video
availability: TBA
official
website
other kevin
smith films
reviewed on this website:
- chasing
amy
- clerks
- clerks II
- dogma
- jay & silent bob strike back
- mallrats
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Kevin Smith, the rude auteur
behind the Jay & Silent Bob movies (including Clerks,
Chasing Amy and Dogma),
has finally made a movie that grandmothers can go see. I know,
because I saw several of them at the screening I attended. Longtime
fans, though, needn't fear Jersey Girl for its PG-13 rating
and its cute-little-girl emphasis. The movie is mature and heartfelt,
though not overly saccharine; I enjoyed it far more than I did
Chasing Amy, Smith's previous attempt to speak truths
about his life through the avatar of Ben Affleck (I realize Amy
is some people's favorite Smith film, but it simply rubbed me
the wrong way). Here, the story has just enough autobiography
and just enough invention, and Smith doesn't feel the need to
bury the characters' feelings in excess verbiage.
Affleck is Ollie Trinke, a
sharpie ruling the roost at a New York PR firm. He meets and
marries Gertrude (Jennifer Lopez, who in her brief appearance
reminds you why she appealed to you before the whole J.Lo media
assault); they have a daughter, whereupon Gertrude immediately
dies. Ollie tries to juggle his job and new fatherhood for a
brief time, fobbing the baby off on his gruff dad (George Carlin)
whenever possible. After a particularly stressful night at the
office, during which he insults both the press and his firm's
hot new client, Ollie is ousted; he returns in disgrace to his
dad's house, takes a job with him cleaning the streets of Highlands,
New Jersey, and determines to be a better father.
Cut to seven years later: Ollie's
daughter Gertie (Raquel Castro), whip-smart and precocious, has
become the center of his world. Deep down, he still yearns for
the monetary chaos of New York, the dazzle and deals, the life.
Parenthood does change everything, as Bill Murray so memorably
pointed out in Lost in Translation,
and there may be a part of Kevin Smith that misses the old days,
unfettered by children, in which he could hang out and read comics
and make movies. It hasn't been entirely an either-or proposition
for Smith, though: he has kept his hand in writing comics as
well as making movies (his output may have slowed a little, but
he's made two films now since the birth of his daughter). So
Ollie's plight is something Smith sees happening to the people
around him, I assume.
Complicating matters is an
angel in New Jersey, in the form of Liv Tyler as a video-store
clerk who openly hungers for Ollie (while, in the best Gen-X
fashion, denying that she is). Affleck and Tyler have played
lovers before, in the execrable Armageddon,
but here, working with a real writer-director, they're charming
enough to make you forget that idiotic animal-crackers scene.
Like many movie widowers, Ollie is held back by continuing love
for his dead wife, but we suspect he's also wary of getting attached
to a New Jersey woman when he fully intends to move back to New
York, someday. As an important PR job interview opens up, competing
with Gertie's school-play performance of a number from Sweeney
Todd (only in a Kevin Smith movie), Ollie faces a Hard Choice.
Jersey Girl is good-hearted entertainment that
goes down easy. Do I miss the old Kevin Smith -- the one who
trafficked in deliriously profane streams of insult and debate?
Sure. Without asking for more Jay & Silent Bob, I do hope
that Smith has more rascally commentary films like Dogma
in his arsenal (he's already advised fans not to expect more
family-friendly films where this came from; his next project
is supposed to be The Green Hornet). But as a one-shot
essay on the pressures of fatherhood and the bewilderments of
new love, it works fine. Smith restores much of Ben Affleck's
credibility as an actor, plucks the Elf ears off Liv Tyler and
makes her glow anyway, writes the perfect irascible role for
George Carlin, and handles (with the invaluable help of veteran
cinematographer Vilmos Zsigmond) the movie's weightier emotional
moments with no evidence of undue strain. Not a bad way at all
to kick off View Askew's second decade.
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