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The
Good Girl |
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Stars: Jennifer Aniston, Jake Gyllenhaal, John C. Reilly, Tim Blake Neslon
Director: Miguel Arteta
Rated: R
Score: 6.5/10 |
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Justine is 30. She's been married to Phil, a housepainter who spends his time getting stoned, for 7 years. She lives in a small town and has a job at Rodeo Retail. She lays in bed at night and tries to fantasize about another life. She's bored with her own. She could have had a different life.
What "The Good Girl" tries to depict is a woman who has decidedly, and perhaps reluctantly - "settled" into her life. She talks about how she wanted to go to college, but she doesn't now although she could. She thinks of travel and kids, just something to change her life. But she doesn't seem to have the motivation to do anything positive. |
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A new worker appears at her store, who goes by the name of "holden" and feels an affinity with the character in 'Catcher in the Rye'. He's moody, quiet, and almost a decade younger than Justine. But he's dark and mysterious, and seems to have the same view of the world as she does. He becomes more appealing to her as she comes home to her stoned husband and his best friend Bubba, sitting on her couch leaving paint stains and not having anything intelligent to say. |
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Her TV has no good reception, which has always bothered her but it's something she accepted as well as expected her husband to fix. Kind of like their life. But Justine is drawn to Holden and becomes involved in an affair with this kid who doesn't seem like he's ever had real affection. He becomes infatuated with having her and she realizes that her life is spinning out of control. She wants a good life, to be a good person - but why can't she make good choices? |
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The film opens with Aniston narrarating that as a little girl you see the world as a candy store, but as you get older it becomes a prison. She goes through the motions of her life and everyone around her at work and home seem to be like zombies. Nobody seems happy, even in the end her husband reveals his need for smoking weed as a desire to just escape. "Have you ever just wanted to escape?" |
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There is some humor in the movie, a co-worker who makes announcements in the store realizing nobody really pays attention so she uses it as an opportunity to say rude things. However the movie does plod along slowly, painfully at times. Maybe appropriately considering that's how all the characters feel their lives are going. They seem to have no soul. Her attempts at having an affair fail after she cannot even save her own soul by going to bible study because one of the members is the hotel clerk where her and Holden have their rendevouz. Then her husbands friend finds out and it gets pretty ugly. He blackmails her to fulfill some fantasy he's always had about their relationship because he always saw them as the perfect ideal couple and it was something he accepted as never having in his own life. Finding out they weren't perfect ironically gave him enough hope to want to change his life.
Overall the film leaves you depressed. It was good but I wouldn't slap this one with high marks, tho the story of leading a mundane life seems to be relatable by many people. Another thing that seemed to ring true was finding out things aren't perfect often wake us up to expectations we have raised for ourselves, giving enough room for a renewed sense of hope. Justine finding out tthe truth of who Holden really was became an eye opener. And whether or not her life benefited from all of it remains uknown, it left me with the feeling their life changed, but there was so much they were simply accepting or lying about to make it bearable. |
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