‘Good Girl’ showcases Aniston’s talent

In theaters

THE GOOD GIRL, Directed by Miguel Arteta, Written by Mike White, 93 minutes, Rated R. Now playing, Railroad Square Cinema, Waterville.

In “The Good Girl,” Miguel Arteta’s beautifully observed follow-up to “Chuck & Buck” and “Star Maps,” Jennifer Aniston proves again why she’s one of the smarter television actresses working today.

Instead of using her considerable clout to star in big-budget films designed to break her free from her television roots and launch her into a new career as a screen actress, she’s played it smart, wisely choosing to appear in a series of smaller films that showcase a range not always apparent in her television show, “Friends.”

In such films as Nicholas Hytner’s “The Object of My Affection,” Mike Judge’s “Office Space” and especially last year’s “Rock Star,” in which she played a rock star’s girlfriend, Aniston has created an impressive body of work that stands as a persuasive argument for her transition into movies.

Instead of demanding her place on the big screen, as so many other popular television actors have done, she’s earned her place on the marquee and generated a good deal of respect in the process. With the final season of “Friends” set to air beginning this month, it seems as though Aniston is the one friend who will have the best shot at screen success when the series ends.

In “The Good Girl,” Aniston is Justine Last, a 30-year-old cosmetic-counter sales clerk at a West Texas department store chain that’s such a dilapidated pit, it makes the current shopping climate at Ames seem like a high-end experience. The store in question is called the Retail Rodeo and it’s hell on Earth, the sort of drab, colorless box that looks as bankrupt as the poor souls trying to keep it running.

And that’s the point. Everyone at the Retail Rodeo is barely functioning themselves, including the customers, who come to Justine and her co-worker, Gwen (Deborah Rush), for cosmetic makeovers when you sense what they really want and need is a makeover of their own lives.

The only person eager to break through the emotional fog hanging over the store is Cheryl (Zooey Deschanel), a caustic cashier with a mean mouth and a face full of makeup who taunts the customers with sarcastic jabs that momentarily lift them out of their misery and into the moment. She’s a witch – and a breath of fresh air.

But Justine is drowning. Unhappily married for seven years to a house painter named Phil (John C. Reilly), a man she refers to as “a pig who can talk” who gets stoned nightly with his buddy Bubba (Tim Blake Nelson), Justine is one of those small-town girls who never found the courage to realize her true potential. And then she meets Holden (Jake Gyllenhaal), a brooding young man hired at the Rodeo who seems as disappointed and as disenchanted in the world as she.

Awkwardly, they form a friendship, fall into lust and are soon recklessly carrying on a torrid affair in the Rodeo’s cramped stockroom and in nearby motels.

Since this is a small town, with all that implies, Justine and Holden must deal with the ugly ramifications that erupt when their tryst suddenly becomes public.

I have a theory about movies that, for the most part, has proved true over the years: Give a film 10 minutes and you can tell whether it’s going to work or whether it’s going to fail, whether a director will connect with an audience or create a disconnect from which most movies never recover.

“The Good Girl” is a good example of this. Almost immediately, from the film’s bleak opening shot, which cuts from the Retail Rodeo sagging under the heat of a blistering Texas sun to a close-up of Justine sagging with boredom under the store’s fluorescent gloom, you sense this is going to be one of those small, carefully realized gems that exposes something true about the human experience. And it is.

Grade: A-

Christopher Smith is the Bangor Daily News film critic. His reviews appear Mondays and Fridays in Style, occasionally on E! Entertainment’s “E! News Weekend,” Tuesdays on “NEWS CENTER at 5” and Thursdays on “NEWS CENTER at 5:30” on WLBZ-2 and WCSH-6. He can be reached at BDNFilm1@aol.com.