If, at some point five or ten years down the line, someone writes an article about Jennifer Lopez or Ben Affleck without mentioning Gigli, the formerly engaged couple will have Kevin Smith’s Jersey Girl to thank. It’s been a long time since one couple mixed their personal and professional lives with such disastrous results: for Ben and Jen, Gigli fell just short of cinematically equaling Bonnie and Clyde’s shootout with the FBI.
Of the pair, Lopez gets far less time onscreen—a wedding scene was reportedly cut as a result of the Gigli backlash—but she conveys a surprising tenderness and insecurity in her small role as Gertrude, a polished literary agent and the wife of Ollie Trinke (Affleck), a workaholic music publicist whose pathological impatience is both his greatest asset and worst liability.
Gertrude dies in childbirth less than 15 minutes into the movie, and Trinke is left to take care of their baby, a daughter he names Gertie. Unable to cope with his wife’s death or his new role as parent, Trinke immerses himself in work until his father, Bart (George Carlin), refuses to take care of Gertie any longer. Flustered, abandoned, and completely covered in baby powder, Trinke has a very public nervous breakdown at a news conference.
The movie then jumps forward seven years. Gertie has become an improbably articulate first grader living in New Jersey with her grandfather and dad, who works as a street cleaner and dreams of returning to his old job and the Manhattan good life. A visit to the local video store shakes up their routine when the employee and part-time grad student behind the counter (Liv Tyler) attempts to bring an end to Trinke’s seven year experiment in celibacy. An unexpected job opportunity in New York also forces Trinke to decide between his original life plan and the quieter suburban existence he now shares with his daughter.
Though Affleck should never attempt to cry on film (or say the line “I’m gonna be the best daddy in the world!”), Jersey Girl nevertheless benefits from his non-method approach to acting, which fits in with the film’s down-to-earth style and subject matter. Like all of Smith’s previous movies, Jersey Girl is almost as littered as New Jersey itself with curse words, sex jokes, and an long list of A-list cameos (some amusing if predictable, others genuinely surprising).
Tyler is casually convincing as Smith’s archetypal love interest, the intelligent but laid-back super-babe whose sex appeal and sarcastic wit are mutually reinforcing. Carlin repeatedly saves the day in scenes that might have devolved into very un-Smith-like saccharine and cliché, even rescuing a will-daddy-come-to-the-school-play? scene that would have sunk just about any other movie.
Filmed mostly on location in Paulsboro, N.J., Jersey Girl is an amiable ode to a way of life, a life whose pleasures and tensions Smith explores with disarming honesty and humor. Having based his career thus far on sexual innuendoes and pot references, Smith has produced a surprisingly insightful movie about definitions of family and success in an ever-accelerating world. With an ending that is predictable without being formulaic, Jersey Girl should appeal to a wide spectrum of moviegoers. It’s good, clean fun—penis jokes and all.
—Nathan K. Burstein