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A Buena Vista releae. Written and directed by Kevin Smith; starring Ben Affleck. Raquel Castro and George Carlin. Released to DVD on September 7, 2004. Ben Affleck stars in Jersey Girl as Ollie Trinke, the consummate Jersey boy. Growing up in suburban New Jersey, Trinke leaves his hometown and family as soon as he can, eagerly shunning the two for the glamour and glitz of Manhattan. Inherently able to distort the truth and get people to enjoy the worst of news, Trinke quickly becomes a star publicist. His life is everything he could dream of: he has a great job, a good-looking wife (Jennifer Lopez) and a baby on the way. Unfortunately, Trinke’s wife dies during the birth of their child, leaving him to manage a job, a kid and his own sense of personal entitlement. Utterly unable to cope on his own, Trinke moves back to suburban Jersey and begins to raise his daughter, Gertie (Raquel Castro) with the help of his previously estranged dad (George Carlin). The appeal of Smith’s films has always come with their unique topics and comic irreverence; the latter usually coming in the form of Smith’s formidable duo of foul mouthed, cock-eyed optimists, Jay (Jason Mewes) and Silent Bob (Smith himself). Jersey Girl differs from this model of previous Smith films because of the aforementioned companions are conspicuously absent. This was Smith’s intent, of course; he even announced it prior to the start of Jersey Girl’s production. Having experienced the birth of his first child and the death of his father, Smith had a plethora of life to write about; Jersey Girl was to be his first truly adult movie. Gone were the majority of dick and fart jokes that made his earlier projects so raucous and off-color. The result of Smith’s endeavor to strike out the crass, in-your-face sexuality of his first five films and to usher in responsibility and accountability is sort of what you’d expect: a movie that seems best described as Smith-lite. Fortunately for Smith though, his style of direction is getting better with time and he has an innate and uncanny ability to infuse his projects with a warmth and love you just don’t see in other films. However, try as he might, Smith cannot disguise the fact that Jersey Girl is as prey to formula and leaps of surrealism as the most mighty of studio blockbusters.
I was entertained by Jersey Girl. It was light, occasional saccharin, and oft heavy-handed–it is still a Kevin Smith film by these virtues–but there were enough times when Smith trained his camera onto the enjoyable relationship between Trinke and his daughter to make up for the project’s lack of subtlety. Contrary to all the press it has received, Jersey Girl is still very much a Kevin Smith movie, it’s just at times, it feels strangely as though Smith is trying to create a film utilizing the sensibilities of some other mainstream director.
Chris Neumer yes, it's true: On the set of Mallrats, Ben Affleck wrote 'thank you' notes to Kevin Smith thanking Smith for casting him in the movie when he'd leave the set for extended periods of time. |
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One of my favorite performances by comedian Chris Rock is his routine about people who want to take credit for things normal people just accept as part of life. "I’ve never been to jail," brags one person. "You’re not supposed to go to jail," Rock retorts. "I take care of my kid," boasts another. "You’re supposed to take care of your kid!" Rock exclaims. "What do you want, a cookie?" Watching writer/director Kevin Smith’s la
For his part, Affleck is good in the leading role. Smith has acknowledged that Affleck does his best work in roles where is allowed to play a lightly veiled version of himself and the role of Trinke provides Affleck with just such a situation. Regardless of the ‘whys’, Affleck deserves a significant amount of credit for his ability to effectively garner audience sympathy for a character that really doesn’t deserve much of it. I reference Rock again. "You’re supposed to take care of your kid, Trinke!"