Jersey Girl

Preview Screening

Jersey Girl is the straight-forward tale of a man having to make choices in his life when he becomes a father. What is not straight-forward about it is that it was made by Kevin Smith, chronicler of slacker comedies such as Clerks, Chasing Amy and Jay & Silent Bob Strike Back. Instead of dick and fart jokes, references to pop culture and foul mouthed stoners (all of which I love), Smith tells a story based on the fact that he himself has become a husband and father, and all the fears and travails this brings.

Ollie Trinke (Ben Affleck) is a successful music PR man in New York, who falls in love with, marries and has a child with Gertrude (Jennifer Lopez), only for her to die in childbirth, producing a girl who he calls Gertrude. He can't handle the loss, doesn't know how to cope with a newborn, and the stress finally gets to him at a big day at work when he ends up with the baby, causing him to make the biggest gaffe in PR history, leaving him unable to work in PR ever again. This means he has to go back home to New Jersey, to live with his father (George Carlin), and work with him cleaning the streets of their borough, while raising his daughter.

There a few problems here: why didn't he get a nanny for the baby, as he was wealthy? Why would the (relatively) small stress of a child cause him to lose it big time? Why can't a man with years of experience and education not get a better job than street cleaning? We have to ignore these aspects, as the point of the film is about a man whose life changes completely and how he survives.

Seven years after everything went Pete Tong, he's still living with his father, still cleaning streets, still trying to get back in PR even though he is a pariah in the industry. An attempt to get some porn in a video shop starts a friendship with Maya (Liv Tyler) that reveals that Ollie hasn't had sex since his wife died, and devotes himself to his daughter. The prospect of a job back in the city, with the interview meaning he would miss out on the father-daughter musical evening that means so much to his daughter brings everything to a head, in a traditional Hollywood manner.

This film is a good film, but not a great film. More importantly, it is not the sort of film that gets people into a cinema, explaining its underwhelming performance at the US box office, bringing in $25M to date. This is the sort of film one would happily watch on DVD or on television in the afternoon, but there is nothing excessively special about it. It's the sort of thing that Hollywood has been doing for years. Partly, it might be to do with the central idea; this film is about being a dad, and what it means to have a child. That is quite a slim demographic; I kind of get some parts of it, being of the same age and having similar fears (even though I'm neither married nor a father). It isn't going to connect with a lot of people in that respect

Another aspect is that it isn't a traditional romantic comedy. Even though there is romance between Ollie and Maya, it isn't consumated, nor is it the main focus, so it won't get the rom-com crowd. It isn't set-piece funny; Smith likes dialogue, which is funny, but there are no standout bits to the film that people will be telling other people about to get them to see it. (When I saw it, I noticed that I was laughing at the dialogue more than others, and there were only big laughs in the more obvious gags.) Obversely, Smith doesn't write here for his core audience, as there is no pop-culture referencing (although he did get a Star Wars quote in there, to keep his track record at 100%) or jokes about sex or foul language. He has very conciously put that one side to tell this personal story, but you won't get many new fathers coming to the cinema to see this film (or many others for that matter). This is a film with a very limited audience, unfortunately, which means that it won't do well over here, either. The musical at the end being the set-piece is a little weird, but that might be my dislike of musicals in general, and Smith is a big fan of Sweeney Todd. The film ends a little quickly, and resolutions are soft instead of complete, but that might be preference again.

I still think it's a good film. Affleck is good (although how he retains his physique after seven years of being a street cleaner was puzzling), handling serious and playful with aplomb. The child (Raquel Castro) is good without being Home Alone cute. Liv Tyler is perhaps in her most comfortable and natural role here, being playful and honest without being needy or obvious, which is a surprise for me as she can be annoying in other films. I hope she does more work like this. There are treats for ViewAskew fans, with cameos from Jason Lee, Matt Damon and some of Smith's old school buddies. Some of the dialogue is very funny in places, showing Smith can do funny without scatology or referencing things. The film itself also looks quite stunning for a Smith film; cleverly getting a good DP in the form of Vilmos Zsigmond, the transitions, the way the camera glides around the action, the general concept of motion being unusual in a Smith film, this looks like a proper film. These all bode well for the future artistry of Smith, even if the low box office might prove difficult for his career. See it at home, you'll enjoy it better.

Rating: DA for general consumption/ VID for my Smith worship