Review: Jersey Girl

Penguin January 7th, 2008

Rating: 2/4 stars

I’m a huge Kevin Smith fan. I’m even friends with him on Facebook.

Jersey Girl is about a guy who’s wife dies in labor, loses his big PR job and has to raise his daughter.

I think most fans were disappointed by Jersey Girl because it was pretty different than the stuff that Smith has put out in the past. There are moments of inspired dialogue, but nothing as sharp and witty as Clerks. And I think that’s where the film went wrong. People were expecting that. They were expecting something vulgar and outrageous and couldn’t see what was there in front of them.

Jersey Girl is sweet and Ben Affleck does a fair job. If anything is wrong with the movie, it would be Liv Tyler’s character. She’s underused and that particular subplot falls flat when it just starts to get good.

Jersey Girl is definitely a departure from Smith’s previous work. But it’s sweet and touching and it works on those levels. It’s not ground breaking cinema, but it’s entertaining (if you’re into that sort of thing).

-Penguin

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Viewing 9 Comments

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    I thought this was really one of his better films. It may not be the funniest, but it's certainly his best directed film yet. It doesn't surprise me that most of his fans ignored it, since it was so different from his other work, but it does annoy me.
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    I think Chasing Amy is still his best work. The narrative was much stronger as was the emotional impact of the film.

    I think a lot of fans have pigeon-holed smith into the Clerks / Mallrats type of films. But he is capable of a lot more. Not action, but real character pieces. His fans are expecting vulgar, and even though he's good at that, it's sad that a lot of them won't give him a chance otherwise.
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    My own opinion of it after I saw it... i think this was my actual quote "an enjoyable if not somewhat formulaic film". It's a formula, but what's wrong with that? I agree people expect Kevin Smith when they see a movie of his, and this film wasn't his norm. But it's endearing and entertaining.

    The more major reason why Jersey Girl flopped I think (in the box office anyway) was the casting of J-Lo... she was barely in it, but her credit on the project following the failure of Gigli was a PR nightmare. Smith said that a bunch of times. I think I remember reading somewhere that he actually shot his movie first, but it was released after Gigli. I might be wrong about that. If i'm not... sucks though. Talk about bad timing.

    When I first got interested in film and started trying to watch more stuff... I definitely had the filmmaker snob attitude. Everything had to be artsy and pushing the envelope or it was no good. Man did I love a good crane shot!

    But film's about much more than that. It's about entertainment and eliciting an emotional response. In the artsy / edgy film movement, it's easy to lose sight of that. What's wrong with a film that's just enjoyable? ;) I miss the old-school steven spielberg popcorn movies... haha.

    Honestly even the least edgy, least artsy film out there can still be solid entertainment and I have great respect for anyone who can direct a film like that. It's hard work.
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    I think the J-Lo point is a very valid one. She was barely in it, but it was marketed as if she was a major player. A lot of films don't do well at the box because of marketing, not because of the film itself.

    For me, it is about entertainment, more so than art. Most "artsy" stuff is boring. You can even argue that everything is formulaic (3 act structure?). But then there's an aspect of cookie cutter. There are so many movies that tell the same story, do the same thing. This doesn't necessarily make them less entertaining, but it does make them less interesting.

    Personally, I wouldn't think about doing another drug movie for a very long time. Mainly because of "Requiem for a Dream". The film covers practically every angle on drugs and addiction.

    That's what separates great cinema from good cinema. Great cinema doesn't have to be ground breaking. It just needs to push the genre or medium a little bit more.
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    I love both pure entertainment and pure art films, though obviously there are a lot more good entertainment films out there, simply because they're the ones that sell.

    J-Lo was definitely part of the reason the film flopped, but I have to assume that the main problem was nothing more than how Smith had made five consecutive films that were all stylistically similar and had the same general tone and sense of humor, and then tried to make a film that was completely different. In any industry, when you spend that much time training your fans to expect one type of entertainment, and then throw something new at them, they will rebel against it. I don't care how incredible you are at writing murder mysteries, the fans won't allow you to make the Sex & the City movie into one.
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    I can't say that I love pure art film. For the most part, I find them extremely pretentious and obtuse. I would definitely want to educate myself more on it, but it just seems like a bunch of BS to me.

    You're right about the whole "training" your fans. Although, Chasing Amy was a pretty strong departure from Clerks or Mallrats. So there was precedent that Smith could move into different territory other than the humor that he had already established.

    Looking at RT, it wasn't just fans who had a problem with it. It got a 42% and 6.3 on imdb. The consensus is that it was "full of cloyingly sentimental cliches." Which I think is valid.

    Looking into the numbers a little more, opening weekend, it made $8.3M in about 1500 theatres for an average of about $5,533/theatre. Which isn't terrible numbers, especially compared to "Jay and Silent Bob Strikes Back", which did $11M in 2700 theatres for an average of almost $4,000/theatre.

    What these numbers tell us is that it actually did a little better than "Jay and Silent Bob". This is not to say that money is an indication of quality, but it does reflect the results of marketing. People did go out and see it, despite the Gigli factor. Would it have done better if it had been in more theatres? I don't know.

    Was J-Lo the reason the film flopped? Jersey Girl had a production budget of $35M while "Jay and Silent Bob" had a budget of $22M. Did J-Lo cost an extra $13M for her short appearance? I don't know. But I'm pretty sure she cost a pretty penny.

    -Penguin
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    Well, in fairness, I think Will Smith must have cost at least as much as she did. He normally commands a higher salary than her and he wasn't even romantically involved with the lead actor at the time to drive down his price.
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    This is true. Then again, he was only in one scene for maybe 2 minutes?
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    Yeah, so about half the length of time J.Lo was in the film. Fits perfectly, really.

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