Kevin Smith’s new film is dedicated to his late father with the tender postscript, “I miss you, Dad.” It is a line that tugs at the heart and suggests the roots of inspiration for his new romantic comedy, “Jersey Girl.”
To fans of the writer/director’s earlier pictures, “Jersey Girl” may appear to have been made by a new Kevin Smith, the father and family man he has become in his middle 30s.
Smith’s perennial characters Silent Bob (Smith) and the potty-mouthed Jay (Jason Mewes) are nowhere in evidence. Their @*&#-everything spirit is absent as well. Gone are the profanity and scatology that defines Smith pictures, including “Clerks” and “Mallrats.” Absent are the discursive rants and diatribes that plague his irreverent but ultimately devout “Dogma.”
“Jersey Girl”‘s leading roles are occupied by Smith regulars Ben Affleck and the peerless George Carlin, and there are cameo turns by other Smith veterans, Matt Damon and Jason Lee. But the only real clues that Smith is the man behind this picture is the first-rate soundtrack mixing tunes from Aimee Mann, the Cure and Jersey’s Boss Bruce Springsteen, and the director’s careless, shot-from-the-couch style of filmmaking.
In place of the usual Smith preoccupations (sex, religion, toilet jokes and sex) is a soft heart he exposed only barely in “Chasing Amy.” His “Jersey Girl” might best be called a weepie, a melodramatic, sweet and too often treacly story of a Manhattan hotshot who is about to learn the meaning of family and self-sacrifice.
The hotshot is Affleck’s Jersey-bred recording company publicist, the sort of guy who works long hours promoting the Next Big Thing, drives a European model sports car and dresses sharp. The early scenes show Affleck’s Ollie Trinke hustling superstars and falling in love with a young woman in publishing, Jennifer Lopez’s Gertrude Steiney. Theirs is a textbook (and rather dull) romance that culminates in the inevitable marriage proposal and hansom cab ride around Central Park. The couple appears poised for a picture perfect Manhattan life when disaster strikes. Gertrude dies in childbirth, bringing an end to Ollie’s enchanted life (and a 99th and likely final end to that tabloid sensation known as Bennifer). When the funeral is over and life for the living is expected to resume, Ollie is saddled with a boatload of grief, a mercilessly demanding job, and a screaming, diaper-wetting infant.
Ollie’s only help, and the movie’s only original element, is his father, George Carlin’s Bart Trinke, a guy who drives a street-sweeper for the public works department in the small Jersey town where Ollie grew up. Bart, a most unlikely and inspired grandfather, rather quickly spells out his son’s new set of priorities. This coupled with Ollie’s catastrophic faux pas on the job means suddenly the Manhattan yuppie is back in his hometown raising a Jersey girl.
Seven years go by with the help of a title card, and the kid, Gertie (Rachel Castro), is now an elementary school student beloved by her Dad and Grandfather.
Smith’s script is touching in a few places but it corresponds to the familiar formula for stories of overworked, ambitious parents who have their self-centered adult lives shattered by the arrival of a small, very dependent person. “Jersey Girl” is “Baby Boom” by way of “Three Men and a Baby” and “About a Boy.” The patented scenes include the crying child who cannot be consoled, the confused father who talks to a baby who cannot understand one word he says. And, of course, the performance by the kid at the school talent show.
Smith adds a few flavoring agents to remind moviegoers that the film is his. Ollie’s new love interest, Liv Tyler’s grad student Maya, is a video store clerk who is writing a paper on married men and p*rnography. When Ollie talks to the pint-size Gertie, he uses words like “impugn.” At the kiddie talent show, Gertie insists on doing a grisly number from “Sweeney Todd.” A chorus of Bart’s colleagues and friends, working class guys who form an extended family of sorts, make a grown-up slackers comic chorus.
But the formulaic nature of “Jersey Girl” and its unabashed embrace of suds makes it awfully sweet stuff. “Jersey Girl” is Smith at his most tender but not, alas, at his most original.
JERSEY GIRL is written and directed by Kevin Smith. Cinematography by Vilmos Zsigmond. Editing by Smith and Scott Mosier. Original music by James Venable. Produced by Mosier. Running time: 103 minutes. Rated PG-13 for some adult language and sexual situations.
FILM REVIEW **
* * * ** Classic; * * * * Excellent; * * * Good; * * Fair; * Poor; open star Don’t bother
