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In theaters
JERSEY GIRL, written and directed by Kevin Smith, 102 minutes, rated PG-13.
Before the release of the new Kevin Smith movie, “Jersey Girl,” the warning signs were hung and lighted for the movie to be a bust.
Unlike Smith’s previous films – “Clerks,” “Chasing Amy” and “Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back” among them – “Jersey Girl” had the stink of a corporate sell-out.
That’s nothing new for Hollywood, where the cash registers still ring as souls are casually traded for fame, but it is something new for Smith, who has always stuck to his vulgar little niche, regardless of whether the masses love his work or not.
And so, over the past several weeks, it has been interesting to watch the director defend his latest picture not for the over-the-top profanity for which he’s known, but for the gentle tone, warm-hearted schmaltz, and sweet family values he suddenly has embraced.
Strange times. But for Smith, it becomes even more complicated. “Jersey Girl” is the first film to feature Ben Affleck and Jennifer Lopez since their tacky romance went so spectacularly wrong and their movie “Gigli” quickly followed suit.
For 12 high-strung minutes, Ben and Jen share the screen in “Jersey Girl,” but here’s the thing, they’re actually rather good together. They have chemistry, humor and energy, which Smith pulls from them in performances that are more heated and real than anything the couple gave us in the many canned interviews before their romantic demise.
More surprising is that “Jersey Girl” isn’t half bad. Yes, its story is a predictable tumble of cliches, but Smith counters with dialogue that’s often sharp and spontaneous, offering enough funny moments to make his movie moderately interesting. As such, it isn’t a total misfire.
In it, Affleck is Ollie Trinke, a single dad, widower and successful New York publicist who is blackballed by the industry after creating a publicity gaff. Fade to black, with Ollie out of work.
Seven years later, the story picks up in New Jersey, where Ollie and his 7-year-old daughter, Gertie (Raquel Castro), are now living with Ollie’s father, Bert (George Carlin). There, where Ollie now toils at a less glamorous job, he’s still trying to pull his life together when he meets Maya (Liv Tyler), a cute video store clerk with an understanding smile and helpful advice on life who might just be the person to get Ollie over his dead wife.
Do we all know how this movie ends? Sure we do. Do we wish it were better? Absolutely. Still, the film is more suited to Affleck’s limited talents than one of his lame action blockbusters and Tyler, always a treat, is a fresh presence onscreen.
This is Smith’s safest movie to date, but it’s also his most adult, a clear attempt to move beyond the comic book fantasy world in which he has lived for so long and try something new. He isn’t entirely successful, but he also doesn’t entirely fail. His movie is average. These days at the movies, that proves better than most.
Grade: C+
On video and DVD
HOUSE OF SAND AND FOG, directed by Vadim Perelman, written by Perelman and Shawn Lawrence, based on the novel by Andre Dubus III, 126 minutes, rated R.
Vadim Perelman’s “House of Sand and Fog” is a tragedy filled with heartbreak, ruin and snowballing despair. It features a murder, a double suicide, an attempted suicide, a second attempted suicide, homelessness, divorce, battery and alcoholism.
Without flinching, Perelman shows you all of it. Without wavering, he lets you have it in the gut. As such, a mix of hopelessness, rage, and grief hang over the movie like an incurable malaise.
The reason it works as well as it does is because the movie is human, the characters are real, and the performances are a jolt. In it, Jennifer Connelly is Kathy Nicolo, a recovering alcoholic who inherits a small beachside bungalow from her dead father and swiftly loses it within eight months.
Compounding her problems is the deep depression she has been in since her husband left her. Unable to function, Kathy has ignored her mail, thus missing the city tax notices warning her about the lien against her property.
When she’s kicked out by authorities, Col. Massoud Amir Behrani (Ben Kingsley), an Iranian emigre and U.S. citizen, buys the property with what little money he has left. His intent is to sell the house as quickly as possible so he can put his family in a better financial situation. But with Kathy having none of it – and a local cop on her side – you can imagine how ugly things get.
Kingsley is excellent, containing his emotions until they can no longer be held back, and Connelly herself is just suitably out of it to be believable in the part.
Still, the soul of the movie belongs to the amazing Shohreh Aghdashloo as Behrani’s wife, Nadi. The actress, herself an Iranian exile, gave one of 2003’s best performances, scoring an Academy Award nomination as a result. Perelman uses her not only as a relatively safe place to invest our emotions when the situation between Behrani and Kathy becomes fully out of hand, but also as a balance between the two characters. As such, hers is the trickiest part to play, but Aghdashloo’s accomplished turn gives the film the grounding sense of believability it needs, particularly as Perelman pushes toward the film’s melodramatic final act, which is at once touching, awful, exploitative and, at least in this context, inevitable.
Grade: B+
Christopher Smith is the Bangor Daily News film critic. His reviews appear Mondays and Fridays in Style, 5:30 p.m. Thursdays on WLBZ 2 and WCSH 6, and are archived at RottenTomatoes.com. He can be reached at BDNFilm1@aol.com.
The Video-DVD Corner
Renting a video or a DVD? NEWS film critic Christopher Smith can help. Below are his grades of recent releases in video stores. Those in bold print are new to video stores this week.
American Splendor ? A-
Anything Else ? B+
Bad Boys II ? C-
Beyond Borders ? D
Brother Bear ? B
Bruce Almighty ? B+
Cold Creek Manor ? D
Dirty Pretty Things ? A-
Dr. Seuss’ The Cat in the Hat ? D-
Duplex ? B
The Fighting Temptations ? C
Finding Nemo ? B+
Freaky Friday ? A-
Good Boy! ? C+
Gothika ? D
How to Deal ? C-
House of the Dead ? D
House of Sand and Fog ? B+
Intolerable Cruelty ? B-
Le Divorce ? C-
Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers ? A-
Lost in Translation ? A
Looney Tunes: Back in Action ? B-
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