With the passing of Jersey Girl, the whole Bennifer saga is officially dead. Good. Not that I have anything against Mr. Affleck or Ms. Lopez, but they were just a little too over exposed, and they’d be the first to tell you in an exclusive interview on some cheesy tabloid show. So now let’s get on with life, a central theme in Kevin Smith’s mature, touching and sometimes cornball opus, Jersey Girl.
Affleck stars as Ollie Trinke, a music promoter with the gift of spin. No matter the situation, he can make something bad good and something good even better. Dedicated to his work and little else, Ollie’s life is put in a tailspin when his young bride Gertrude (Jennifer Lopez) dies while giving birth. Left to raise his baby daughter on his own, Ollie one day caves under the pressure and makes himself infamous amongst his professional circle. During a press conference, he calls the press for what they often are, bottom feeders digging for stories in other peoples’ business. The irony here of course is that Bennifer was just getting started when Jersey Girl was being filmed. Today, Ollie’s speech, a definite high point in Jersey Girl, feels like Affleck himself going, “Enough already. Go bug Britney Spears some more. Leave me alone.”
Needless to say, in a line of work that’s dependent on a good relationship with said bottom feeders, Ollie is out of work and becomes a full-time dad. The film skips ahead seven years and Ollie is now comfortable in his role of being the cool dad to his young piece of J-Lo spawn, Gertie (Raquel Castro), and in his middle class New Jersey lifestyle. In walks Maya (Liv Tyler), a video store clerk researching the rental habits of porno-viewing dads for her Master’s degree, and all of a sudden Mr. Mom transforms into a romantic comedy.
My guess is that many of Smith’s hard-core fans are pissed with Jersey Girl. Jay and Silent Bob are nowhere to be seen and there’s little in the way of fanboy chatter. Instead, Jersey Girl is just outside Smith’s View Askew-iverse. There’s still plenty of lowbrow humour, but there’s also a lot of more mature things happening. Smith, now himself a father, is contemplating what it means to have kids and the responsibilities it entails. This could very well be a transition movie for Smith if he wants to move away from his Gen-X going nowhere flicks he is famous for. Now he can get serious, although I’d argue he’s already done so very well with Chasing Amy and in parts of Dogma.
Jersey Girl is cute and it knows it. Casting a child in a main role is always risky. They threaten to show up the other leads and steal the spotlight with aw-shucks moments. But the young Castro shows a good balance of childish charm and little diva syndrome. She’s believable as the child of Lopez not just in how she looks but how she acts as well. There’s several times when Castro’s attitude mirrors that of Lopez’s Entertainment Tonight tabloid persona.
With my expectations not overly high, Jersey Girl delivered in a way that makes it good but not great. Like in all of Smith’s films, the dialogue is wonderful and realistic, but also consistent with Smith’s other films, there are times when the momentum doesn’t hold up. And with the real-life relationships surrounding the picture hopefully out of the picture, we will all be able to continue on with our lives and look at Jersey Girl for something more than the Bennifer movie not called Gigli.
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