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Jersey Girl
(2004)
Dir: Kevin Smith
Without having seen Gigli, I feel confident declaring that a boundless, double-helix vacuum emerges every time that Ben Affleck and Jennifer Lopez share a screen. While this wasn’t apparent in countless photos of them smiling and waving together, it burns like a flaming meth lab when they, uh, “act” in one other’s presence.
Can two black holes actually fornicate? It’s like in their garish embrace, the pair sucks the sham-earnest out of everything in their glitzy, bullshit, little universe. I guess they are kind of brilliant in that sense, but we‘re talking Jersey Girl here.
Fortunately for this tepid film, Lopez’s shrill, mommy-to-be character dies in labor, leaving Affleck alone to do his patented, charismatic plodding through Smith’s most uninspired screenwriting to date. Following the death of his wife and a subsequent professional snafu, Ollie Trinkie (Affleck), a high-powered, New York PR fuck, is forced to return home to New Jersey and raise his daughter, Gertrude (Raquel Castro), as a single dad. Moving in with his father (a largely wasted George Carlin), Ollie eventually settles into a street-cleaning job, and an existence that centers around nurturing his little princess. Suffice to say that a love interest pops up (Liv Tyler), as does a chance to get his old job back. So obviously, a school play must be saved at the absolute last minute!
Once Lopez is out of the picture, Affleck’s acting does grunt through a couple of chin-ups. Whimpy chin-ups, but a marked improvement nonetheless. He’s actually quite engaging while being romanced by Tyler, and while letting loose during the aforementioned school play. And hey, when it’s time for quiet, seaside reflection to some somber Fleetwood Mac, nobody does brooding like Affleck. The main problem arises when he interacts with his daughter, near-constantly referring to himself in the third person:
“Daddy doesn’t want to watch Dirty Dancing again!”
“You’re the only girl Daddy takes on dates.”
“Daddy misses mommy.”
“Daddy should’ve humped Paltrow when he had the chance.”
Smith’s dialogue is typically too muddled with comp-201-vocab and dork-jargon for his actors to eviscerate it effectively. Here he streamlines things to mixed effectiveness. The subdued verbiage bodes well between Affleck and Tyler, but when it’s involving Ollie and Gertie (yeeesh, that name sucks), not only is it wooden and hammy, it’s also quickly grows annoying and creepy.
The fact that Jay and Silent Bob never appear and try to get Gertie high, probably angered Smith traditionalists, prompting countless centurial re-visitations of Mallrats, but what’s most disappointing about this movie is that is so utterly predictable and sappy. When Ollie tells Gertie that he’ll always be there for her because she’s the only thing that he was ever really good at, it’s the forehead slap heard round the world-wide-web. But then again, near the beginning of the movie, a bike messenger with a harelip tells Ollie not to wipe his baby’s ass back to front or she’ll get “crotch rot,” so there’s always that.
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