The Good Girl Movie Review:


Another Friends? star journeys further into the world of acting. This time Jennifer Aniston sheds her princess image and tries to reinvent herself.
Aniston stars as Justine Last, a cosmetics sales girl at a discount store. Justine is in a constant struggle each day to overcome her boredom.
One day Justine watches Holden Worther (Jake Gyllenhaal), a new boy to the store who is obsessed with reading the novel "Catcher in the Rye". Justine asks Holden about the book and the conversation sparks a budding friendship. The friendship evolves into love on Holden?s part and an affair transpires. Justine eventually has to decide between her boring life, this impressionable young man and what is best for her.

The film is filled with all faucets of film as the film does a good job of delivering us into Justine?s world. The flaws in the film stem out from the chemistry between Aniston and Gyllenhaal and how the film resolves some its more serious issues.

I never believed there was a true relationship between these two. There seem to be a force-field between these two in some scenes. Was this intention able? Was it an angle on the character of Justine? If so then what did the character actually want from the kid?
I liked how bold Aniston tries to be in the film but this really isn?t the kind of role that the "Monster?s Ball" role was for Halle Berry. She shows a lot of growth but she does stick out from the average and twisted characters she is assembled with.

In the film's third act there is the very cliched scene that finds Justine pulling up to a traffic light and being indecisive. I was let down by the film?s ending because I never felt that Justine evolved fully as a character.
It?s always hard to end a movie that follows an affair. The sleeper hit "Unfaithful" suffered from that same pitfall.
"The Good Girl" is interesting to watch to see how far Aniston has come. She still has more to grow. There are some priceless lines said by some of the store clerks. Just from those lines alone we are surely never to walk into a Wal-mart the same way again.

(3 of 5)

So Says the Soothsayer.

Dean Kish

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