The Good Girl (2002)

Wow!!!!! I'm shocked to see people calling "Cake" her only good and Oscar worthy performance.This movie was beautiful. Jake Gyllenhaal was very good as well. I read "The Catcher in the Rye" before watching this movie in order to be able to absolutely feel it, for I am an Aniston fan and also read some good reviews about this movie; and man that was a good decision. Any of us would feel separated from the world and everyone close to us from time to time; I guess Justine was one of us. An ordinary person with an ordinary boredom of life, so when she met Holden, well he was right for that short time, before she got pregnant and felt kinda alright again like many of us do, when slight changes happens in our lives. Holden, on the other hand, I don't think he would have ever been happy even if she had left with him and eventually all that anger and loneliness would have burst out one way or the other.Now Jennifer did a swell job here, and I know this movie came out when she was still doing Friends alongside loads and loads of romantic comedies, so it's even more underrated and especially when Renée Zellweger got so much attention for that not-so-bright comedy "Bridget Jones".Approach this with cautious, this is Not a typical Aniston comedy. Heck it's not even a comedy, just pitch black.

If you crossed The Catcher in the Rye and Madame Bovary and set the result in a small Texas town, it would be something like this film. It has all the angst and adolescent turmoil of the former and the emotional desolation and individual isolation of the former. Toss in the work of a fine cast and the star power of Jennifer Aniston and you've got yourself a funny, touching movie.Justine Last (Jennifer Aniston) is a 30 year old woman who got married too soon and has found herself trapped in a boring job and to a pot-headed house painter. Stewing in her own misanthropy, Justine is only roused from her self-pity and self-destructive anger by a young man who gets a job at the Retail Rodeo where Justine works. The 22 year old (played by Jake Gyllenhall) calls himself Holden, after the J.D. Salinger character, and refers to the name his parents gave him as his "slave name". Those two things tell you pretty much everything there is to know about him. Justine begins an affair with Holden, if you can call sex in a motel after work an affair, and it seems to brighten up Justine's miserable existence. But Justine soon realizes that Holden, for all his overly-sensitive pretensions, is just an angry and unstable boy who has fixated on her as the answer to all his dreams. Then her husband's best friend uncovers her infidelity, touching off a chain of events that forces Justine to choose between the life she thinks she hates and another existence she can't even imagine.I quite liked this film. It's smart and honest and has just a bit of snark, while acknowledging how immature such snark usually is. The Good Girl makes you think about personal unhappiness and the choices and attitudes that create it. The main characters of Justine and Holden are terribly discontented with their lives, yet as the story goes along it makes you understand that probably none of the characters are living the lives of their dreams. The difference is they aren't torturing themselves and everyone else over it. Most movies that focus on the quiet desperation of ordinary life either embrace too completely the idea that normal, unexceptional lives are awful things or they are too viciously judgmental of such common angst. The Good Girl takes a more mature and measured perspective. It validates Justine's unhappiness with the life she chose by marrying the first man she really loved but holds her accountable for not making the best of that life. Her actual problem isn't her circumstances. It's her own lack of ambition or imagination to do anything to improve them.As the story unfolds, you can see that the other characters have found ways to deal with their individually unsatisfying lives. Justine's husband smokes pot to escape. The security guard at the Retail Rodeo has his religious faith. An older co-worker of Justine's has a stoic determination to make the best of things and a disdain for those who don't. A younger co-worker uses snide sarcasm to lash out at a world that doesn't meet her standards. But they all do something, while Justine and Holden just wallow in their anger and resentments.Now, there's a subplot in the story involving the best friend of Justine's husband that's much more over-the-top and overtly self-aware than the rest of the movie. It explicitly details some of the themes that remain under the surface of the rest of the film and you might find it either bracing or off putting. I suppose it depends on your tolerance for a smart script hitting you over the head a few times to make sure you get its point.Jennifer Aniston got a lot of praise when this movie first came out and it was deserved. She's able to convey the subtle nature of Justine's passivity so that you can empathize with the character, even when she's not all that sympathetic. Jake Gyllenhall is also very good with the dual nature of Holden. On the one hand you can see how Justine was attracted to him as a kindred spirit, but on the other hand Gyllenhall always keeps the stunted emotional side of Holden in view of both Justine and the audience. John C. Reilly as Justine's husband does some nice work as well. He takes a character that is supposed to be dumber and shallower than either Justine or Holden and makes him into a person and not a plot device.There have been a lot of independent films made about the ordinary lives or ordinary people. Most of them suck because they're made by filmmakers who either hate such ordinary people or see their lives as nothing more than metaphors to be exploited. The Good Girl does none of that, which makes it a movie worth seeing.

This film is about a married woman who is in an unhappy job and unhappy marriage. She meets a young man from work, and her life turns into an emotional turmoil."The Good Girl" has a good plot that tells a woman's struggle between real life and fantasy. Jennifer Aniston is convincing as a woman who is torn between the two options. She acts well and brings her unhappy life and difficult dilemma into life. John C. Reilly is also good as a uncaring husband. Though he may love his wife, he is not good at showing it. Despite the seemingly engaging plot, the delivery of the story is not executed well. There are many scenes which leaves me unsatisfied, as if the scenes are truncated in the middle. Minor characters are also very poorly developed. They exist only for the sake of existing, and they add nothing to the story. A lot of them such as Zooey Deschanel's character can be cut out altogether without affecting the plot. In short, "The Good Girl" is a somewhat engaging film but I am very likely to forget about it in a few month's time.

I'm sure allot of people can empathise with this film, as I'm sure all of us have felt trapped and fed up with the way our lives are going at some point or another.Jennifer Aniston plays Justine, and in my opinion gives a brilliant performance as we not only empathise but feel sorry for her as her Husband spends every night in front of the TV with his friend getting stoned. This made me understand why she started an affair with Holden - also wonderfully played by Jake Gyllenhaal. Holden comes off as a dark and disturbed character who is also fed up with the way his life is going, even though he comes off this way he is still a very likable character. All of the characters in this film seem to be frustrated and trapped in some way and that's where i think all of us can relate to the film in one way or another.Its hard to tell whether the film is a drama or a comedy. The film is very deep giving the plot of the story yet there are a few touches of humour within the film.One of Jennifer Aniston's best pieces of work and i recommend this film to a mature audience.