Jersey Girlreview by Peter T. Chattaway |
posted 3/26/2004
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Has fatherhood tamed, civilized, and domesticated Kevin Smith? Or has a daily routine of cleaning up after his baby and changing her diapers given the director of Clerks and Dogma new ideas for his special brand of coarse humor? The answer to both questions is "yes."
In many ways, Jersey Girl is a typical Kevin Smith movie, from the celebrity cameos and Star Wars references to the abundant four-letter words and Catholic imagery. But in several other ways, the film marks an interesting departure for Smith. It is his first PG-13 film, and it is the first of his movies that does not feature the sex-obsessed pothead Jay or his sidekick Silent Bob. It is also the first of Smith's films since the boy-meets-lesbian romance Chasing Amy (1997) that aspires to something resembling genuine human drama—and, at times, despite Smith's weaknesses as a filmmaker, Jersey Girl is actually quite touching. If this film is marked by anything, it is by Smith's love for his daughter, and for his family.
Ben Affleck and Raquel Castro
Off-screen love of another sort is captured in the film's opening scenes. Ben Affleck, who has been in every Smith film since 1995's Mallrats, plays Ollie Trinke, a successful Manhattan-based music publicist who falls in love with and marries Gertrude Steiney, played by Jennifer Lopez—Affleck's real-life girlfriend-at-the-time. It is, of course, pretty much impossible to watch their scenes together as though all the tabloid coverage had never happened (just as it is impossible to hear Lopez's character worry about appearing fat next to famous singers without remembering that Lopez is one herself), but seeing these two characters go at it is still a little like watching two friends make out in the middle of a party;—you feel like telling them to get a room. Then again, knowing that their love is doomed in real life does give their fictitious movie romance a certain poignancy.
And what doom it is. Gertrude dies of an aneurysm while giving birth to their daughter, Gertie. At first, Ollie copes by burying himself in his work, while leaving Gertie in the care of his grumpy father Bart (George Carlin). But eventually Bart forces Ollie to look after the child himself, and the stress of balancing work and family ultimately prompts Ollie to make some spontaneous, vicious, and career-killing remarks at a public press conference. His reputation in ruins, Ollie moves to his father's home in New Jersey, takes a job cleaning streets like his dad, and commits himself to being the best dad ever to his daughter.
The film then jumps ahead several years. Gertie (Raquel Castro, who is so believable as J-Lo's daughter, you wonder which actress was cast first) now goes to a Catholic school and dreams of putting on a musical, while Ollie wishes he could somehow get back into the publicity business. And because Ollie has not had sex with anyone since Gertie's mother died, he rents porn—until the day a video clerk named Maya (Affleck's Armageddon co-star Liv Tyler) blackmails him into becoming a subject for a paper she's writing on the subject. When, during their first interview, Maya discovers that Ollie has not had sex in seven years, she tells him he needs to get "back on the horse," and she immediately goes back to his place for some quick, casual, no-strings-attached sex—which is promptly interrupted when Gertie comes home.
Liv Tyler, Raquel Castro, Ben Affleck
Maya is not so much a character in her own right as she is a male fantasy figure, but even so, Smith does use their romance, such as it is, to make some pertinent moral points, in his usual non-judgmental manner. When seven-year-old Gertie catches her dad and Maya in their underwear, she chastises them for doing something that Dad himself told her only married people should do.
The fling with Maya is ultimately just a subplot, though. The real love story here is between father and daughter, and even though Smith throws in some abrupt mood changes and falls back on some stock movie clichés—yes, when the protagonist has to rush somewhere in time for the film's heart-tugging climax, he will be obliged to abandon his car by an obstacle in the road and run the remaining distance on foot—the sincere feeling between Ollie and Gertie still transcends the movie's formulaic conventions. Affleck is quite obviously at ease in this down-to-earth drama in a way that he never seems to be in his action movies, and Castro seems like a genuine child instead of like a child actor—she is smart but not too smart, cute but not too cute. (Gertie does occasionally use grown-up words like "subtle," but for the perfectly plausible reason that Ollie teaches them to her.)
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