Jennifer Aniston, Jake Gyllenhaal, John C. Reilly, Tim Blake Nelson, Zooey Deschanel,
John Carroll Lynch, Deborah Rush, Mike White.
Directed by Miguel Arteta. Written by Mike White.
Justine (Aniston) works at the makeup counter of Retail Rodeo, a cheesy Wal-Mart
clone where most of the staff is bored numb. She works under Gwen (Rush) at the makeup
counter, and sometimes with acid-tongued cashier Cheryl (Deschanel), who mitigates her
boredom by tormenting the customers. Justine has reached 30 years of age, and has been
trying to get pregnant. The
doctors say she's fertile and ready to breed, but it is just not happening. Her husband
Phil (Reilly) and his best friend Bubba (Nelson) are house painters, who come home
after work, watch TV and smoke pot to escape the drudgery of their life. But they
are relatively happy, and Justine is numbingly depressed.
At work, Justine meets 22 year-old Holden (Tom) Worther (Gyllenhaal), who goes by the
name Holden because he thinks/wishes he's Holden Caufield, the tortured teen in the
coming-of-age classic Catcher In The Rye. He wants to escape his life, he wants
to escape his clueless parents. Justine and Holden begin to hang out together and
begin an affair. Holden thinks Justine is the first person that understands him. For
the first time in awhile, Justine smiles, and has some joy in
her life. But things start to go downhill after that, as her secret affair doesn't
stay secret and she has to make a choice, whether she'll take this "one last chance"
for a life, or try to rekindle the life she originally envisioned with Phil.
From the makers of Chuck and Buck,
The Good Girl is another low-key and imaginative story from Mike White about a
desperate and ordinary woman who thinks her affair with a depressed, Holden Caufield
wannabe is her "one last chance" for to escape the prison Justine feels her life has
become. Despite Justine's actions continually digging her deeper and deeper into a
black hole and her doing many unsympathetic things in trying to get herself out, she
remains curiously sympathetic. The script and director refuse to make moral judgements
about the character's actions, allowing the audience to decide how they feel about what
she does, something mainstream movies studiously avoid. The story revolves around the
choice she has to make - to stay with her decent, dopey stoner of a husband who loves
her, and a thoughtful, depressed kid who dropped out of college, becomes obsessed with
her, and wants her to run away with him to who knows where. I had no idea what her
choice would be. The film follows no formula, neither the family-values, restore the
family plot line nor the romantic escape-the-boring-life and run away with your lover script,
straddling and twisting both of them.
With Friends reportedly in its last year, all of the show's stars are trying to
branch into movies. Initially, Lisa Kudrow enjoyed the most success, shining in good
films like The Opposite of Sex. Recently, Jennifer Aniston has been working in
smallish romantic comedies and dramas, with mixed success. The Good Girl demonstrates
that she has much more range than she has shown in Friends and other comedies,
and perhaps she has good chance at success after the TV show is over. I very quickly
forgot about Rachel, as Aniston melts into the oppressively bored, joyless woman stuck
in a mindnumbing, crappy retail job and in a marriage that has long
ago lost its spark. The rest of the cast is equally good, from the smart-mouthed,
cashier by Zooey Deschanel who takes out her boredom on her naive customers by using
garrish makeup, to the not-too bright, unambitious duo of Tim Blake Nelson and John
C. Reilly, completely unaware of Justine's unhappiness and depression.
The Good Girl is an independent film that is original, sometimes funny and
with a script which refuses to follow what is expected. While it sometimes falls
flat because of its deadpan style, it is generally an interesting trip with people
that life has passed by.
 
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