**1/2 (out of ****)
Starring Ben Affleck, George Carlin, Liv Tyler, Raquel Castro, Jason Biggs, Mike Starr, Stephen Root, and Jennifer Lopez
Directed & written by Kevin Smith
2004
102 min PG13
“Jersey Girl” is a movie with nothing particularly, overwhelming wrong with it. It’s mawkish and maudlin in places, it telegraphs in the mood of every scene with sentimental pop rock, and while all those things bother me, they’re not enough to sink a whole movie. “Jersey Girl” even has a fair number of good laughs. But it just doesn’t build up much momentum. What I’ll always remember about the flick is the warm-hearted, open-faced affection Ben Affleck’s character feels for his little daughter.
Young widower Ollie Trinke (Affleck) faces the age-old quandary of the mutual exclusivity of an eighty-hour-a-week job and active child-rearing. He can’t have both worlds and “Jersey Girl” is about the trials and travails of living well in one, while hungering for the other. The movie’s first act follows his high-powered life as a New York publicist after he’s more-or-less given his newborn daughter to his father as a gift. Stress (or a conscience) finally gets to Ollie, he blows up at a meeting with the press, and he’s fired.
“Jersey Girl’s” second act brings us back home to New Jersey, where Ollie is joined by his crotchety, working-class dad (George Carlin), his dad’s friends (Stephen Root and Mike Starr), and a love interest at the local video store (Liv Tyler). Ollie has swung in the opposite direction—I know people like this—and has thrown himself completely into raising his daughter (as a seven-year-old she is played by the sometimes-too-cute Raquel Castro). No dating, no interests, not many friends, and a strictly 9-to-5 job as a construction worker for the city. He has a great relationship with his daughter, but the urge to get back into the fast lane is always nagging at him.
All this comes to a head when Ollie is offered a job back in his old life. In a sense he must choose between fatherhood and a career. The movie’s ending, at his daughter’s school pageant, is a little over-the-top, but it’s saved mostly by Affleck’s face. His expressions are so loving, so overjoyed; he really does have the face of a man who loves clumsily, stupidly, but helplessly. Affleck isn’t much of an action star or a multiplex romantic lead, but he is a great conflicted guy, a great jerk, a great self-centered guy who reminds us of ourselves. (Actually, he reminds me of my friend Benjamin, who has a mole-shaped scar on his face in the exact same place as Affleck’s mole. It’s uncanny how many mannerisms they share.) I like how Affleck shows resentment buried for years, just waiting to burst out. He is adrift in “Pearl Harbor,” “Armageddon,” and “Daredevil,” but terrific at being a real guy, even if he’s too good-looking and buff.
The movie is the work of writer-director Kevin Smith, a cult and college favorite who came to fame with his low-budget comedy “Clerks,” embarrassed himself with “Mallrats,” then dared to humorously explore religion and sexuality with “Dogma” and “Chasing Amy.” He is a writer of fascinating, flawed, and cooler-than-thou characters in interesting predicaments, the kind you rarely see in a Will Smith blockbuster. His directing style is usually to plop his camera down and let people talk, and his framing and blocking are sometimes awkward and amateurish. He was once called—accurately, I think—“the master of the medium shot” by a Dallas film critic. Part of why “Clerks” is still his best film is that a movie about convenience store clerks fighting off boredom should look like it’s been shot through a security camera. But with “Jersey Girl” he’s gone from noticeably clunky to unnoticeably, conventionally good, with even some effective camera motions.
Smith popped up in the early 1990s around the same time as Quentin Tarantino and Robert Rodriguez. This was about the time that I and everyone else in my generation began to take a deeper interest in the movies. The likes of Smith, Q.T., and Rodriguez struck us as delightfully self-conscious, limitlessly knowledgeable of pop culture, and independent rebels at odds with the major studios. Only a few years our senior, each director was “one of us,” and they all really knew how to run off at the mouth. A decade-or-so on, Tarantino has gone places and risen above the pack, with both an Oscar and a Palme d’Or on his mantle, and his “Kill Bill” is an expensive dream come true. Miramax, the company responsible for most of the independent successes of the ‘90s, was recently acquired by Disney and is now as puissant as Fox or MGM, so we can’t really call Q.T. and Smith “the new guys” anymore. It seems unlikely that David Gordon Green, the rising twenty-something star of the independent film world—who is about as interested in being hip as Kevin Smith is in quilting—will acquire a fanatical college-age following like Smith and Tarantino.
“Jersey Girl” doesn’t quite get under its own skin, so it didn’t quite get under mine. It is a valiant effort from a maturing director. Not to say that his previous efforts were bad or childish, but it’s good that he’s branching out in new directions. Maybe if I see it again I’ll like it more.
Finished June 16th, 2004
Copyright © 2004 Friday & Saturday Night
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