Tags
Adam Brody, Amanda Seyfried, Comedy, Drama, Horror, Jennifer's Body, Johnny Simmons, Megan Fox, Movie
- I'm happy because people think I'm hot
- I'm unhappy because people think she's hot
R
Amanda Seyfried, Megan Fox, Johnny Simmons, Adam Brody
Needy: Ok, Jennifer’s evil.
Chip: I know.
Needy: No, I mean she’s actually evil. Not high school evil.
Needy (Seyfried) and Jennifer (Fox) survive a fire at a concert, but Jennifer is taken away in the van of the strange group that had just played. The next time Needy sees her, Jennifer is a monstrous killer that gets energy from the blood of her victims.
This was a hard movie to not hear a lot about when it was released. It’s Diablo Cody’s follow up to Juno, and it features everybody’s favorite eye candy from the Transformers movies, Megan Fox. It seems like the popular thing to do was to bash Cody’s hip dialogue and Fox’s attempts at acting, but honestly, neither of those things really bothered me much. I thought Fox did a perfectly fine job, and the dialogue was silly, but not distractingly so.
My main problem came with the story structure and the direction. The movie seemed disjointed and didn’t flow very well. In the hands of a different director, I think there could have been a much better result.
Not that it’s a lost cause. Seyfried is good in the lead, and I liked the character of Chip because he was used at times as a voice of the audience, calling some of the lingo the other characters use into question. I liked the general vibe of it, and there are certain scenes and ideas here and there that work well (like the whirlpool to nowhere). I also liked the inclusion of some reasonably intelligent adult characters.
But overall, it never all quite comes together into something that really works. As is, it’s watchable and even somewhat enjoyable. It’s just not something I plan on making a habit of watching too often in the future.
Looks aren’t everything. First things first, you want to make sure she’s not a demon-possessed killer.
10 – 2.5 for story/structure/flow problems – .2 because yeah, okay, the dialogue can be a little annoying at times – .6 for a weak ending = 6.7
You hit the proverbial nail on the head with “the dialogue can be a little annoying at times” … I think that’s the hallmark of any Diablo Cody screenplay. Much as I ended up liking “Juno,” it took me a good 20 minutes to accept the dialogue, and some of the chatter in “Jennifer’s Body” is even further out there — like “you’re lime-green Jell-O” or “MoveOn.org, Needy.” Also, try as I might, the appeal of Megan Fox (yeah, she’s hot; yeah, she has THISMUCH comic timing) escapes me. So certainly “Jennifer’s Body” has a few points against it.
However, there is much to be said for Amanda Seyfried, who is rapidly becoming one of my favorite young actresses working today. She has the most challenging role, the one that requires the most range, and she nails every part of Needy. Also, there are a few redeeming characters, like Chip (Johnny Simmons), who’s quite charming, and Adam Brody as the slick and creepy Nikolai. Plus, it’s hard to hate a movie that drops observations like “Do you know how hard it is to make it as an indie band these days? There are so many of us, and we’re all so cute and it’s like if you don’t get on Letterman or some retarded soundtrack, you’re screwed, okay? Satan is our only hope” or “Hell is a teenage girl.”