I’m not a fan of Kevin Smith’s movies. And with Ben Affleck, and Jennifer Lopez is featured on the first segment of the movie, not to mention the basic problems with the hype concerning this film, as I went into it, I have to say I was very surprised by what I saw in the end. Though Smith does goes more mainstream with a film that is allegedly based on his life with his kids (If my life was this corny, I’d have blown my brains out long ago), “Jersey Girl” doesn’t set precedent for originality, nor does it really win us over with its sickening sweetness that works against the story rather than for it.
The film tugs on the heartstrings of its audience with a plot line that can never be sure if it’s mocking family films or working to create one. Affleck plays record exec Ollie who falls in love with Gertie and while giving birth she dies, and now he must come to grips with her death while learning to be a good father. Student, the pros for this movie lie more in the parts of the whole, for example: George Carlin gives a really good performance outdoing basically everyone else in the movie with a touching turn as the moral center for Gertie and Ollie and their relationship. I think somewhere, someone knows within the studio about this movie and its real purpose.
At one point someone will explain the reason for this film. I’m assuming Kevin was on contract and just had to make a movie to hold up his end of the deal, but I’m assuming for fun someone bet him he couldn’t make the most unoriginal, contrived cliché piece of fluff this side of “Beaches”, and Smith owned up to the bet and won a butt load of money, because this is one of the most utterly derivative pieces of fluff Smith has made. Perhaps his balls were lost during production of “Jay and Silent Bob”, but this is a really hokey piece of fluff, not to mention really forgettable.
Smith is utterly bland, cliché, and run of the mill in his effort to tape the mainstream. I mean, he starts off the film with one of the most annoying cliché openings I’ve ever witnessed, That whole kids-say-the-darndest-things opening has been done to death, and was funnier in “Kindergarten Cop,” and then we enter in to the story which is just uninteresting and vapid with Affleck meeting his girlfriend who happens to be Jennifer Lopez and they fall in love and we speed through this right away when she dies and then we see Gertie, Lopez’ character’s daughter, who as always is too smart for her own good. I hate rambunctious kids and that whole plot device with the kid knowing too much for their own good and being smart allecky is never cute nor is it ever funny.
Cue Liv Tyler who plays the sassy video store clerk who is so direct and blunt yet so utterly boring in her character’s skin. Yes, as always, Tyler doesn’t do much for the movie and is very bland in her role serving as the plot device for a film filled with plot devices. Everything about this movie is paint by numbers from the opening death scene, to the father coming to grips learning to become a parent, right down to the love interest who appears at the right time of the story and fulfills something missing in the main character’s life, gag me. And almost all of the time the dialogue between Tyler and Affleck is often corny, cheesy, and boring and they have zero chemistry to actually watch in the film, from their little exchanges and her come ons, and none of it interested me in the least.
Smith just continues going through the movie peg by peg as if he’s reading from a book of clichés with aspects like a lot of melodramatic moments, the dramatic kiss, the fight between Ollie and Gertie which was so derivative of “Kramer vs. Kramer” it left me shocked, and there’s even the topper, a slow clap. Ugh. Kevin I may not be a fan, but you disappointed me dearly. This is a forgettable movie, and a cloying attempt at mainstream fodder, somehow, in spite of despising pretty much everything he’s ever offered movie fans, I expected unconventional or original with Kevin Smith. Who knew he’d go so cliché and often times hokey with this formula when there was more he could do with it?