Inside Jennifers Body There Is a Good Movie Dying to Get Out
| Tweet | |
|
|
Unfortunately for Jennifers Body Diablo Cody’s script captured anything resembling a good story and beat it, chained it to the wall, and left it for dead.
Written by James “Crypticpsych” Lasome
November 1, 2009
Watch the Jennifers Body Horror Movie Trailer!
Buy from Amazon
Release: September 18, 2009 (U.S. Theatrical)
Directed by: Karyn Kusama
Written by: Diablo Cody
Starring:
Megan Fox as Jennifer
Amanda Seyfried as Needy
Johnny Simmons as Chip
Adam Brody as Nikolai
Sal Cortez as Chas
Needy (Amanda Seyfried – and I wish I was making that character’s name up) and Jennifer (Megan Fox) are like, SOOOOO totally BFFs, ‘kay? They would, like, take a bullet for each other. One day, they decide they have to head down to the local hotspot to check out the “salty” new indie band, Low Shoulder (with lead singer, Nikolai, played by Adam Brody), because they are unbelievably hot and they want them to have their children.
The band thinks Jennifer is a virgin (which she so totally isn’t, not even backdoor) and hypnotizes her while they perform. The club burns down during the act, but the band rescues Jennifer and takes her away in their party van, which totally cheeses off Needy because she’s SUCH a buzzkill. While Needy heads home alone, Jennifer is taken out into the woods where the band attempts to sacrifice her in an offering to the Dark One (grody!) so that they may become famous.
Needy suspects something is up when Jennifer appears at her house on the night of the ritual, dripping with blood, and vomits this totally gnarly black gunk on the floor. Unfortunately, Jennifer was a TOTAL slut, so, instead of dying, she was reborn as a hot, sexy succubus (OMG!) who survives on the flesh and blood of her total horndog male classmates. Now she’s got her eyes on Needy’s stud muffin boyfriend Chip (Johnny Simmons) and it’s all up to Needy to protect her honey bunny and send Jennifer back to the VERY bottom of the social ladder.
Read that again. I’ll wait. Does that look remotely entertaining? If I were reading the preceding overview to you for an extended period of time, how long would it take before your head exploded? That’s the problem with Jennifers Body. The script is so ear-bleedingly terrible that it took every ounce of my willpower to not leave the theater 10 minutes in and multiple times thereafter. See, I liked the Diablo Cody penned film Juno where she managed to make a very likable teen love story by combining characters who spoke lightly annoying “DiabloCody-speak” with ones who didn’t, then phasing out the slang.
Jennifers Body doesn’t have any of the minor cleverness or phasing out. Instead, you get 102 minutes straight of such sparkling nuggets of drivel as “jealous” abbreviated “Jell-O” (lime-green, to be precise), “salty” to describe a hot guy (insert sexual pun here), and “cheese and fries” as a sound-alike for Jesus Christ (to offend even the Agnostics). This film drowns under the language because just as one begins to feel engaged in some way, any way, a character comes along and says something so ridiculous that the film rockets right back off the rails.
There are several lost opportunities for originality and tension in Jennifers Body. A Satan-worshiping Indie band, for example, is much more interesting and smart than a random metal band and there’s a great line about how difficult it is for an Indie band to make it big without getting onto a movie soundtrack (*wink wink*). There is a great sense of humor and tension as they prepare to kill Jennifer – until they randomly break into a rousing rendition of “867-5309” before doing so. Why? That pales in comparison to the climactic scene (which I will not spoil) that plummets to absurdity when one character randomly says “Ow, my tit!” Nice.
The shortcomings of this film are just sad. The gore is passable but sparse and this film had the potential to be something really unique. It could have played as a lifelong friendship coming apart at the seams in a combination “coming of age” and “demonic possession” kind of way, blending high school angst and cliques with blood and gore... But Jennifer treats Needy like such abject garbage it does make one wonder how they could have become friends in the first place.
There have been reports of bad acting by Megan Fox in this film, and that may or may not be true. There is so much insipid “teenspeak” pouring out of her character’s mouth that it’s doubtful that any actress could have made it sound meaningful. Therefore it is impossible to critique Ms. Fox’s performance.
Amanda Seyfried is the saddest part of this film because she is actually very good in it. Seyfried managed to rise above the stupid dialogue to create a likeable protagonist that the audience can relate to. Hers is the only character who reacts even remotely logically to the events surrounding her.
Amanda Seyfried and her portrayal of the character Needy is the only possible reason to recommend Jennifers Body. There is nothing else that can be endorsed with a straight face, and just about all the responsibility lies with what is possibly the worst script ever written for a mainstream horror movie. Juno was good, Ms. Cody, but let’s face it… you have no idea how teenagers actually talk. Questions or comments about Jennifers Body? Discuss it on The Ossuary Forums!
Take me to Horror Movie Reviews!
Horror Movie Freaks is the FREE eZine from Best-Horror-Movies.com that will give you the new horror releases, the new horror news and the new horror reviews that you CANNOT LIVE WITHOUT!!
Subscribing is easy, painless and free.
Do it NOW!!
