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Film Review: "The Good Girl"
While Jennifer Aniston may not be a co-star in any other film I’ve liked with the exception of “Office Space”
(a film everyone ought to own and love), "The Good Girl" took me by surprise. I gave in about a week ago to watching this film with my wife
(thinking I was in for a shallow romance flick), and now have to recommend it to almost everyone I know. Notice the key word,
“almost”. This movie depicts some raw imagery of humanity and its depravation, and may not be suitable for some.
The movie is a study on decisions and consequences, dreams and reality, and how one woman’s world comes crashing down
because of her choices. The layers of this movie are fantastic. At first, the cinematography and environments all
depict the sterility of her life. She lives in a very small suburban town — Boringtown, USA, where nothing ever happens
to her. Sterility is everywhere. The quiet lifeless streets; the automated shoppers that frequent the “Rite-Aid-like”
store she has worked at for eight years; the churchgoer that is always soliciting her attendance at a Bible study; even the
sterility of her womb—as she and her husband are trying to have a child and cannot. Everyday she comes home to her husband (played
wonderfully by John C. Reilly) and his best friend, sitting on the couch smoking pot.
Nobody’s lives go anywhere in this town, and it seems that no one cares.
The plot begins to unravel as she finds broken companions that feel the same way. As she forms relationships with those
that also feel an “urge to greatness”, she begins to make decisions that bring destruction and more lies into her quiet life.
Unlike other movies, this film is not about the culmination, or the end. It is about the struggle in the middle; the tension- and
that is perhaps what I like the most about it.
The movie’s sterile facade gives way slowly to the true state of the lives around Aniston's character. Some cold, some depraved, some not as
holy as they pretended. I love that. The Christian especially. Not only did he watch her making these decisions and not offer
support, and not only did he get off on her sin—but profited by it. The Christian was the first to gossip and turn her in to the
law— much like the story of the woman caught in adultery.
Jennifer Aniston plays the struggle perfectly. I loved the way she would lie in her bed at night, eyes staring off in the distance,
riddled with guilt and the genuine struggle of wanting two different lives.
The only static (read: Authentic) character in the movie is Jennifer’s husband. He is a simpleton that she wrote off as unintelligent
and uncaring. Yet, in the end, he is perhaps the only person in her environment daring enough to risk complete forgiveness and
continuing adventure with her.
Overall, I loved the movie for its depiction of true life, its acting, and its multiple layers.
This one gets 5 stars from the searching.
Review by Jared Williams
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