film: the good girl

Movie: The Good Girl (Surprisingly Good)

I rented this movie out on the recommendation of a friend. It's normally the kind of thing that I would avoid because it looks like a romantic comedy (my most hated movie genre) with Jennifer Aniston on the front.

It's actually more of a black comedy though, Aniston plays Justine, a checkout chick who is bored with her life and her stoner husband (John C. Reilly). When a new guy starts at her workplace, (Jake Gyllenhaal of Donnie Darko fame) she makes a connection with him and starts an affair.

This movie is definitely quirky, but not in the normal shmaltzy hollywood way. I'm glad I got it out and I can recommend it to all of you. Check it out

I LOVE this flick. It's the film that really made me like Jennifer Aniston as an actress (and yes, I also loathe romantic comedies). Well-scripted and very well-acted ... the story is very engaging but, at the same time, highly believable. You can tell the filmmakers took care to maintain a certain, I don't know ... authenticity, for lack of a better word.

It kinda reminded me of Lovely & Amazing (a film that looks dumb but is actually pretty good) in terms of the relationship between Aniston and yummy yummy Gyllenhaal.

Yes i saw this flick a year ago...on an inflight movie! It was surprisingly good...it was nice to see Jennifer Aniston play a role that was so uncharacteristic of her. Thumbs up :D

film: The Good Girl (Surprisingly Good)

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I saw this movie when it first came out on video after hearing rave reviews from the festivals or wherever it was first shown.

On the first viewing I didn't particularly care for this movie because I found it difficult to LIKE the characters. I didn't really see anything likable about them - J. Aniston's character was quite the bitch, and made stupid mistakes that were difficult to sympathize with, but upon further viewings I must agree that the authenticity that fruitfly speaks of is probably why I now love the movie. I have watched it 5-6 times now, and I like it each time. I can definitely empathize with her character now. She did suprisingly well in her role.

Always love john c reilly as well - he's very underrated, imo!

But yea - it's definitely not a romantic comedy. It's very dark, and not a movie I'd watch if I were depressed!


Oh - and the "GET IN YOUR CORNER!" scene is a RIOT!!!!

^ ROFL I forgot all about that.

John C. Reilly is indeed a great actor.

Yes Jennifer Aniston was great in this and I really respect her as an actress now. She just needs to stay away from the romcoms and do more of this kind of thing.

I couldn't decide whether I liked Justine as a person or not, I kept swinging between liking her and hating her throughout the movie. I was touched by her though as she was definitely a realistic character.



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Telling her boss where Holden was at the end of the movie was really out of line and I have to settle on not liking her for that reason. Such a top movie though

I enjoyed the movie, although I would have to agree that I got a bad taste in my mouth from Aniston's rolling over on Gyllenhaal's character so easily. It kind of spoiled the sympathetic nature of her character, and although that may be what the director intended, they had already done a pretty good job of painting her as the sympathetic "not so good" girl anyway.

I didn't really see it as a black comedy, so I thought they really missed the chance to drive home the better point...that although she had made all of those mistakes up to that point, when called to the carpet to stand up for her friend she redeemed herself as the "good girl".

I thought the fellow who played the husband's friend (can't remember his name) also gave a good supporting performance. He gave a pretty good performance in Wonderland as well.

Just as a sidenote, the celeb media hacks are now lampooning Aniston as the "not so good girl" in her breakup with Pitt.

^ Oh really, the one I heard was that Brad Pitt was cheating on her. Anyway, that's not important ...

I like how Justine was not completely likeable, how she hurt and betrayed the people in her life who weren't by any means perfect but who loved her.

^^^That's right, what IS important is that Pitt is now back on the market for the single BL ladies.

Supposedly the story is that Jen didn't wanna make babies because of her career ambitions, the selfish bitch. And being the fishwife shrew that she apparently is, she got all jealous because Brad became friends with Angelina Jolie...like a man can't have platonic female friends. 8)

On the movie, I think that they made the point very well that by doing "the right thing" (staying in her marriage, staying at her krappy job, turning over the thief to the authorities) she was actually screwing over everyone who loved her as well as screwing over herself. I just think it would have been a more poignant point if they had made it so that the one GOOD thing she actually did was to allow her friend to escape from his hell, or at least not actively take part in his demise.

After all, she and Holden were the only two characters who considered their lives "hell" and wanted to escape. All of the rest of the characters were either happy, or resigned to their fates. It would have been cool if she could have at least had the realization that hey, screwing over these people was shitty but at least one person escaped his hell...instead, nobody did.

Actually, I thought it was more poignant that she turned him. It was also completely in her character to do so. By turning him in she took the pressure off herself (her boss knew she knew something) and it was the "good girl" thing to do.

The fact that turning her lover in also leads to his death just slams it home how selfish she is. Especially when she reads his last story. He was the only one in the movie willing to take some real action to make his life better, and she ruins it for him.

I saw this one on HBO.. probably 18 monthes ago. I was also surprised how much I liked it. Jennifer played that role better than any other I've seen by her. Although she did a lot of scandelous things... I didn't get pissed at her in the movie. Her life seemed pretty fuckin sucky to begin with. This is deffinetly a movie I'd pop in on rainy Sunday afternoon.


BTW what's with Reilly getting the "innocent man who always gets fucked over by women" role?
- The Good Girl
- Chicago
- Magnolia

Beatlebot said:

Actually, I thought it was more poignant that she turned him. It was also completely in her character to do so. By turning him in she took the pressure off herself (her boss knew she knew something) and it was the "good girl" thing to do.

The fact that turning her lover in also leads to his death just slams it home how selfish she is. Especially when she reads his last story. He was the only one in the movie willing to take some real action to make his life better, and she ruins it for him.

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More poignant that she turned him in? I'll give you that it was more in her character, but more poignant? I don't see how staying completely within her selfish character would be considered poignant at all.

Sacrificing herself by keeping quiet would have at least indicated some poignancy to the tragedy. That probably would have released her from her hell as well, as her affair would have no doubt been completely unearthed when the store attempted to prosecute her, leading at the very least to her firing and the ending of her unhappy marriage. As it was, she took the route of cowardice and showed no real contrition...just a pointless tragedy.

I just don't buy that "selfishness is reality" is a poignant message.

BTW if you haven't seen this movie yet and are planning to, PLEASE DO NOT CONTINUE READING our discussion. Go see the damn thing, then come back to share your thoughts with us.




[Edit: My post looks like a review; sorry for the length]

Beatlebot said:

He was the only one in the movie willing to take some real action to make his life better, and she ruins it for him.

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Very true. I think Justine is drawn to him because he's burning with this desire to make something, anything, happen. You can tell that he's been waiting for a long time for the right time (and the right person) to make his dreams a reality.

Justine, as the trustworthy, reliable girl-next-door, differs from Holden in that she deliberately stifles her passions, convinced that her life is most tolerable when she fulfills people's assumptions of her being a "good girl." Her relationship with Holden allows her access to a secret outlet for her hidden desires -- she gets to experience sex, intrigue, drama, romance -- without jeopardizing her public image and without forcing her to actively confront the trappings of her life.

I think Justine might have mustered up the courage to take some action, especially in her marriage, had Bubba not caught her at the motel and blackmailed her. It seems that Bubba's reaction to her infidelity -- disgust and anger at her cheating on his best friend, and a creepy, obsessive resentment that she violated the image he had of them as the ideal couple -- sends her into panic mode. Even though she hates her life, the thought of hurting her sweet, slow, unsuspecting husband and losing the security of her daily routine frightens her in the way that impending release terrifies the prisoner who knows nothing but life in confinement.

Essentially, Justine makes a decision: she will do the "right thing," absolving herself of nagging guilt and increasing risk of being found out by everyone else. She decides to save herself and leave Holden to the wolves -- after all, he's a troubled boy who needs help, and what good would it do anyone if she went down in flames with him? I think his suicide, while shocking, is not entirely surprising to Justine, nor devastating. In fact, I think she feels relieved that he disappears from her life with very little effort on her part (she sends the authorities to deal with him, and he conveniently kills himself) before their affair becomes public knowledge.

She also does the "right thing" by confessing infidelity to Phil, but by allowing him to believe his assumptions about the details of the affair, we see that she's determined to play it safe and do whatever it takes to regain the security of her "good girl" image. She assures Phil that yes, despite what the doctors say, he is indeed the father of their baby, and by the film's end we are treated to something that resembles a happy ending (happy family, baby, smiles all around) ... except, by now, we know that appearances can be deceiving, and the official story of a life masks a world of secrets and deceptions.

This film is about lives of quiet desperation, existences in which fear has frozen desires and aspirations to possibilities beyond the sphere of dull contentment. The characters are so fearful, in fact, that threats to the status quo go unnoticed in their midst -- perhaps deliberately so.

^^^Nice character exposition.

"...he's been waiting for a long time for the right time (and the right person) to make his dreams a reality."

I think both characters were afflicted with the flaw that some external event or person was going to transport them from their hell. In Holden's instance, it was the injection of self-confidence he received from the attentions of an attractive female, which also turned out to be false since they were essentially no more than the manifestation of Justine's desperation rather than genuine attraction.

The only real difference in the two characters, imo, was that Justine was more firmly entrenched in her mental prison cell, while Holden was not, since he was not confined by a marriage. Even so, Justine still had a chance to release herself passively through external events (which is what she THOUGHT she wanted) when Holden asked her to run away with him after confiding that he had robbed the store, even if it was not the route he originally suggested. As I suggested before, she could have remained silent and his external event (the robbery) would still have destroyed the walls around her.

That would have been a more moving denouement, imo. Had I been writing the script and chosen to take that route, I think I would have written an ending similar to that of Cast Away, with Justine standing in place as her world dissolved around her, then fading off...

I find one unexplored aspect of Justine's rolling on Holden interesting...once Justine was confronted by the store officials and made aware that they possessed knowledge of her involvement with Holden, she was essentially confronted with a variant of the Prisoner's Dilemma. Given that she has no way of knowing Holden will kill himself, if she rats him out, will he not also turn on her and implicate her once he becomes aware that she turned on him?

I think it's reasonable to assume that had Holden been apprehended before he killed himself, he would have turned on her in anger and implicated her, albeit untruthfully, since the evidence strongly suggested her complicity anyway. So to me, not only did Justine make the cowardly decision, she made the WRONG decision logically at the time AGAIN. She eliminated entirely the possibility that Holden would not be caught, and thereby ensured her entrapment in the Prisoner's Dilemma The only thing that saved her from that dilemma was Holden's suicide...he was the only semi-heroic character in the film.

It still ensured her remaining in her hell, though, so you have to conclude that she WANTED to remain there all along, as you alluded to in your post...she just wanted a cell with a better view.

^^ You both have some really good points but I had a slightly different take on the matter.

I thought that Justine actually had a deep love for her husband. Right at the start of the affair she almost stops it because, as she tells Holden, "I don't want anyone to get hurt"

She goes ahead with the affair simply out of boredom. Although she loves her husband, they are not well matched and she thinks that Holden is her equal. You get the impression that her sex life with her husband isn't that great because every day when she gets home from work he is smoking up with his buddy on the couch.

When her husbands friend discovers her in the affair, she becomes afraid that he will tell her husband (and hurt him) so she goes to the length of actually sleeping with his friend to keep his mouth shut. I saw that as an act of love for her husband. I guess that's one of the reasons I thought it was a black comedy.

Where she really falls down is that she doesn't have the guts to break it off with Holden directly. She tries to kill him off by getting him to eat dodgy blackberries instead. I don't think that she was ever going to really leave her hubby.

Remember that she only admits to having an affair when her husband finds out about it from the credit card bills or something. I think after that she just goes along with his assumptions because it is easier than explaining the truth of the matter to him. Especially after her lover kills himself.

Could be that I just give Justine too much credit though. What do you think?

Well, it's all a matter of interpretation, so no particular view is necessarily right or wrong on the matter.

While I would agree that Justine probably had some level of affection for her husband, I would say that her addiction to her "good girl" prison that she had striven to build up over the years was by far greater, and that her desire to avoid hurting her husband was basically the manifestation of her diseased, addicted ego attempting to avoid destruction.

I didn't see her efforts to conceal the affair as an act of love for her husband; rather, I saw them as her addicted "good girl" ego attempting to preserve itself. Even when the affair was discovered she didn't come entirely clean about it by revealing her other adulterous behavior with Bubba...her diseased ego simply allowed her husband to assume that the security guard was to blame in order to gain as neat a resolution and preserve as much of the "good girl" ego that remained as possible.

That's why I didn't see anything poignant at all about her turning in Holden. Her diseased ego was simply acting out of the self-preservation instinct, which it had been doing all along throughout the movie.

I don't see how you figured that the blackberry incident was an actual attempt to poison Holden, though. She simply bought the blackberries at a roadside stand. I interpreted her action as her perception that the blackberries were the embodiment of the "evil" that she and Holden were committing, and when she saw Holden enjoying eating the "evil" she freaked and slapped them out of his hand.

Remember Justine's friend who got sick and died in hospital? Justine thought that it was because of the blackberries that she ate from that guy on the roadside. So when the affair gets too much for her she takes Holden out there and gets him some blackberries. Remember how she keeps telling him to eat them? Then when he really starts getting into them she changes her mind and slaps them away from him.

Terrific movie. I really enjoy seeing actors go out of their comfort zones and Jennifer more than aquitted herself with this quirky little gem.

Plus it has Jake Gylenhall, what else could you want... now seriously? :D