The Good Girl(2002)

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First off, the acting in this movie is phenomenal. Jennifer Aniston proves she can do things outside of romantic comedies, and then some. She carries this film with a stunted grace and never drops the level of quality and focus even for a moment.

She stars as Justine Last, a bored housewife who spends her endless days working at a soulless Wal-Mart-esqe store, where every other employee is as colorful and pathetic as the last. She has nothing to return home to but her husband Phil (John C. Reilly), a housepainter who is sweet but constantly stoned. Her life begins to take some sort of meaning after she falls in love with a boy who calls himself Holden, after J.D. Salinger’s hero of Catcher in the Rye: they are two souls who simply yearn to be understood. I feel like their love is idyllic, in a way—they understand each other, they crave each other, and they are certainly attracted to one another.

But as all star-crossed relationships end in tragedy, the two cannot be together. In the end, it may be that they understand each other too much, that they need each other too much, and that they are simply too intense to exist together without destroying one another. I know this sounds very hokey, but definitely see the film before you rag on me—you may see what I mean.

The Good Girl is also really well directed. There were some great montages and lots of sweeping shots underneath Justine’s voiceovers that worked beautifully with the script. For her role, Aniston really undergoes a transformation from the glam movie star we know her as, to a slouching, shy, flawed human; Reilly is perfect as the well-intentioned but clueless husband; and Jake Gyllenhaal stands out as the seriously depressed, intense Holden. Even though he’s much younger than Aniston, we can see where she is attracted to him—his eyes, his obsessive story writing, his passion for her, all make him very sexy. (Alix and I really want to see him in another depressed role in Donnie Darko...)

One last thing—believe it or not, this movie is a comedy. It’s very very funny, and the humor is a constant throughout, but it’s a bitter humor as well. It’s also only 93 minutes, which I think says a lot; every scene matters, every shot has its point, and every funny line has a purpose. All in all, this is a really really great film.