Pay Jennifer’s Body no mind
Jennifer’s Body / As an actor, Kevin Costner followed Dances with Wolves with Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves, and the next film he directed was the critically maligned The Postman. Halle Berry’s next appearance after winning an Oscar for Monster’s Ball was the low-rent Gothika. After Gladiator, director Ridley Scott brought us Hannibal, and there’s the most famous example of Michael Cimino with his post Deer Hunter-debacle with Heaven’s Gate, a film that led to the downfall of United Artists. Even Steven Speilberg is not immune from the post-Oscar curse, as he showed by following up Schindler’s List with a Jurassic Park sequel, and again, when A.I. came after Saving Private Ryan.
Keeping that auspicious list in mind, now we can feel like we’re not gunning for stripper-turned Oscar-winning screenwriter Diablo Cody’s second effort, the crapfest known as Jennifer’s Body.
The title is the enticement, seeing how Jennifer is portrayed by Megan Fox, this year’s masturbatory femme-fatale. Director Karyn Kusama has that in mind, making Fox go through the gamut of outfits–cheerleader, miniskirts with lace leggings and stripper heels, and an array of undergarments. It’s when she has to open her mouth that she becomes grating, partly because Fox is really not a very good actor, and more so because Cody’s bon mots and verbal wordplay don’t work here as they did with her debut effort, 2007’s Juno. In that film, Ellen Page’s verbal non-sequitors worked because they were often met with befuddled glances from whom she was speaking. Here, in Cody’s vision of a small town in Eastern America, every teenager speaks as if they were auditioning for an illiterate teen-musical, perhaps David Mamet on ice. English professors in the film’s town of Devil’s Kettle must cry themselves to sleep at night.
In the movie, Jennifer and Needy (Amanda Seyfried) have been best friends since grade school, but have grown up very different. Where Jennifer has bloomed, Needy (short for Anita) has regressed, wearing frumpy clothes and oversized glasses. Jennifer convinces Needy to break a date in order to see an emo-band at a local watering hole that was apparently built with matches and gasoline, as a spark sets the entire club ablaze in seconds. The two girls escape, only to have the band leader (Adam Brody, in full-douchebag role) whisk Jennifer away in the band’s van. When Jennifer returns, she’s covered in blood. And things get worse.
Unfortunately, so does the film. Cody references and borrows from films like The Evil Dead (which gets two shout-outs) with slapstick gore that doesn’t match with the tone of the rest of the film. Jennifer’s Body is supposed to be a satire of school hierarchies and cliques, a throwback to Heathers this time with actual demons instead of inner ones, but here, everyone’s an asshole. The rest of the film follows with the style and panache of screenwriting 101: Needy becomes more independent, Jennifer becomes more vicious and boys who only see her for her body end up getting their own ripped apart. It’s supposed to be irony, people. It’s a horror story with a comeuppance for the boorish men who never see the girl past the outside beauty. But Cody and director Kusuma cheapen their argument by making their characters make out on a bed for no reason, and nobody rips them apart.
Aside from movie critics, that is.
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