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Here's a rough draft of my review for Jersey Girl (if anyone's interested):
I never thought I’d see a movie that would make me double over in laughter and swell up in tears, all in the first fifteen minutes. Then again, I never thought I’d see a Kevin Smith movie that would make me swell up at all. Nevertheless, Smith’s latest, Jersey Girl (opening Mar. 19) packs a punch into places in your heart that you wouldn’t expect.
Jersey Girl represents yet another step in the Kevin Smith progression from the outright ridiculous hilarity of Mallrats and Clerks to the more relationship-focused, mature films Chasing Amy, Good Will Hunting, etc. (I’m assuming Dogma was a relapse). In Jersey Girl, Smith shows his emotional development again, incorporating a more personal and emotional approach than we’ve ever seen out of him before. At the same time, he’s still quintessentially Smith: brutally intelligent, often mocking, and every so often, still ridiculous.
With a veritable matchbook of stars (Ben Affleck, Jennifer Lopez, Liv Tyler, and more), Smith has a lot to work with, but the acting is overshadowed by Smith’s skill in constructing fantastic situations for his actors to perform in. Jersey Girl won’t surprise you with its plot: happily married dad (Affleck) suddenly has to cope with the loss of his wife (Lopez), job, and the burden of a baby daughter (I’ll skip to the end just to show you how stock this plot is: Dad gives up everything he ever wanted, just to race home trying to make it to little Gertie’s school play Will he make it? Will he MAKE it?). But Smith makes clear, that although the plot may be stock, the laughs– and the heart– are definitely not.
Affleck plays Ollie Trinke, a young, dynamic music publicist making news in New York. Trinke is married to book editor Gertrude (Lopez), and they have all the puppy love and great sex that you’d expect such a ridiculously good-looking couple to have. But (as always) things take a turn for the worse: a childbirth gone wrong, and a subsequent breakdown, leaves Trinke without a job, without a wife, without the city he loves, and with a newborn baby that he’s supposed to raise.
Although Affleck puts on his most convincing performance in years, and Lopez may actually move you to tears (no, not in that Gigli way), the best acting comes out of Raquel Castro, playing Ollie and Gertrude’s seven-year-old daughter. Liv Tyler does a great job of being a small-town horny babe, George Carlin (Cardinal Ignacious Glick in Dogma and the hitchhiker in Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back) plays a convincing granddad, and Will Smith, Matt Damon, and Jason Lee get cameos.
Those looking for good old fun-loving Kevin Smith need to look elsewhere; in Jersey Girl, he’s set his sights higher. Although still hilarious at times, the emphasis is definitely on sadness, pain, and learning to cope with loss, often so much that the drama seems a bit over-played at times. Nevertheless, the old-school Smith wins out, when Ollie comforts his wife, “Those Hollywood actresses? They’re all just cracked-out whores � And then there’s the whole Fresh Prince thing... but you’ll have to watch the movie to find out about that.
All in all, Smith shows artistic development that extends beyond his roots in comedy, but there’s no lack of laughs in Jersey Girl. There’s no Jay and Silent Bob, but I think we can make do with J-Lo dying of a brain aneurysm.
'Oh, and Morocco offered 2000 monkeys to help detonate landmines (an offer which was refused).' - J.D._May
