Posted by lakerstan at ip68-224-104-244.lv.lv.cox.net on March 16, 2004 at 20:59:05:
Don't know if this has been posted or not...
By Kirk Honeycutt
LOS ANGELES (Hollywood Reporter) - Taking a breather from mall rats and comic book zealots, writer-director Kevin Smith stakes out what for him is terra incognita in "Jersey Girl" -- a sentimental love story about an emotionally devastated man who must find the right way to love his young daughter.
Smith stumbles setting up dramatic confrontations and strains credibility a time or two with implausible moments.
Nevertheless, it's pleasing to witness Smith operating without the geeky brashness and potty-mouth dialogue. The presence of Vilmos Zsigmond, one of the world's great cinematographers, certainly makes this the best-looking film of Smith's career. The problem is that "Jersey Girl" never adds up to much.
Ben Affleck and Liv Tyler -- they teamed up briefly in "Armageddon" -- will be a strong draw for the under-30 crowd. The presence of Affleck's ex, Jennifer Lopez, is a plus as well despite the fact that she exits the movie in 14 scant minutes. The much-delayed film should rack up above-average numbers for Miramax as it reaches out beyond Smith's core audience to bring in older audiences.
Affleck plays Ollie Trinke, a hotshot New York publicist who woos and weds his lady love Gertrude (Lopez). When Gertrude dies in childbirth, Ollie is left distraught and with an infant daughter he has no idea how to nurture. He brings the baby home to his dad, Bart (George Carlin), in a small New Jersey town, where he expects his father more or less to raise her while he resumes his warp-speed rise in the PR biz.
But the tragedy has, mysteriously and improbably, turned Ollie into a jerk. Yelling at the office staff, especially assistant Arthur (Jason Biggs), causes no real problems. But when Ollie yells at the assembled media at a press conference and disses his own client -- a rising young TV and music star named Will Smith -- Ollie gets canned immediately.
An instant pariah in the biz, Ollie is forced to give up his cool Manhattan lifestyle. We are then asked to believe that the only job he can land is as a city sweeper and garbage collector like his dad. Cut to seven years later, and father and daughter -- named Gertie (Raquel Castro) after her mom -- get along great. But wait. How did that happen? Isn't that the meat of this story? Why does their bonding take place off-camera so to speak?
Nevertheless, as the second act gets under way, the movie's major issue is resolved and the absence of a woman in Ollie's life gets taken care of the minute Gertie and Ollie walk into a video store and clerk Maya (Tyler) smiles at Ollie. What passes for conflict centers on Ollie's obsession with getting back into publicity in Manhattan. The movie insists that Ollie's outburst has barred him from PR for life. (In a cameo scene, Matt Damon and Jason Lee literally laugh him out of their office during a job interview.) But a publicist yelling at the press isn't nearly as rare as Smith seems to think it is, nor would anybody be ostracized to this extent, especially if he were as good as Ollie is supposed to be.
The movie builds up to a crisis when Ollie lands a key job interview on the same afternoon as Gertie's school music pageant. This creates implausible screaming matches about life values in the Trinke household featuring Ollie, Gertie, Maya, his dad and even his dad's buddies (Stephen Root, Mike Star). Nobody, of course, thinks to reschedule the interview. There is no question that Smith's heart is in the right place, but his dramatic instincts fail him miserably.
The actors are all fine, especially young Castro, who does bear a resemblance to Lopez. Her felicitous, impish charm infects the movie and brightens her scenes with Affleck. For that matter, Tyler manages several sexy and romantic scenes with Affleck, making you wish Smith had further investigated that relationship rather than relying on trite sitcom gimmicks. Carlin, for once in his on- and off-again movie career, has a lengthy role as a man content with his lot in life but puzzled over why his son is so dissatisfied with his. A game Will Smith turns up for cameo as the star Ollie dissed.
All credits are pro, the most outstanding of which belong to Zsigmond, whose lighting gives the movie a romantic feel, where the morning is bright with promise and twilight alive with potential.