Workaholic Ollie (Affleck) finds his life thrown into turmoil when his wife dies during child birth. But when he meets Maya (Tyler) things begin to change ... Sentimental but amiable comedy drama reuniting the Chasing Amy star and director.
Kevin Smith’s latest film casts Ben Affleck as a Manhattan spin merchant whose life falls to pieces when his wife dies during childbirth and he loses his job. Moving back in with his father (George Carlin) over the river in New Jersey, Affleck’s left holding the baby, a permanent reminder of his beloved’s death.
Despite the downer premise, Jersey Girl turns out to be all very, well, cute, and therefore not recommended to anyone with a low level of tolerance for movies about babies, or if you’re feeling in any way cynical. Substitute the Jersey of the title for the words “About” and “A”, and you’ll have a better idea what to expect, right down to the last-reel school concert in which Smith demonstrates his maturing musical tastes; where once he’d base an entire skit in Clerks around the thrash-metal anthem Berzerker, now he stages routines from Sondheim’s Sweeney Todd.
This may be the film Smith was working towards seven years ago, when he turned out Chasing Amy, a New Emotional Maturity indie pic (other examples: Before Sunrise, Jackie Brown, Henry Fool) which, for this viewer at least, demonstrated its writer-director’s cinematic immaturity by being neither as funny as Clerks (or certain sequences in Mallrats) nor as touching as it would clearly have liked to have been. Maybe it’s the wife and child Smith’s taken on since then, maybe it’s the death of his father (to whom the film is dedicated), but there’s something about the way the emotion is served up here.
Most filmmakers peddle sentiment for gross points and a pay cheque, but you’re left in no doubt that Smith really means this, displaying an emotional honesty that gets Jersey Girl a long way whether or not you buy the narrative development, or even individual scenes. The film is full of moments that don’t add up, or which you really shouldn’t buy – Affleck emerging from a storm drain looking pristine; that (very) old dramatic device of forcing a supposedly lovin g father to choose between attending his daughter’s concert and another event, representing self-interest – only for the waves of emotion generated by the leads to carry the viewer through.
Affleck, working towards redemption after the corporate drudgery of Paycheck and his chest-beating jerk in Gigli, here makes a creditable return to his blue-collar roots, picking up his screen daughter in a street sweeper and making something lovable out of the line “I’m not a whoremonger, dad”. As his character’s affirmation of life in the face of death and apparent defeat, Liv Tyler is less girly than she’s previously been allowed to be on screen; the lines under her eyes have become cherishable signifiers of experience, her body rounded and less sylph-like. Just as he’s proved capable of making life on the outskirts appear as vital as life in the city itself, Smith has the knack of writing in such a way as to allow Hollywood megastars to pass for ordinary men and women.
Those who have cause to query Smith’s acceptance into the all-encompassing folds of the Weinstein brothers – and those are some folds – will not be especially impressed by the video shop where Tyler works, in which Miramax titles feature too, too prominently; a rental tyro like Clerks’ Randall would have had none of that. Still, for the most part, Jersey Girl proves an unusually quiet, thoughtful and sensitive Smith movie, its scatology quotient limited to a couple of minor baby-poop jokes: Affleck spends more time encouraging his daughter to flush after herself. There’s not much Jay, but it’s all Silent Bob: Jersey Girl is one from the heart.
< less
View all 124 of Mike McCahill’s reviews
