Opening

74% Fast & Furious 6 May 24
22% The Hangover Part III May 23
63% Epic May 24
96% Before Midnight May 24
88% We Steal Secrets: The Story Of Wikileaks May 24
83% Fill the Void May 24
17% A Green Story May 24
—— Alyce Kills May 24

Top Box Office

87% Star Trek Into Darkness $70.2M
78% Iron Man 3 $35.8M
50% The Great Gatsby $23.9M
46% Pain & Gain $3.2M
69% The Croods $3.0M
77% 42 $2.8M
55% Oblivion $2.3M
99% Mud $2.2M
36% Peeples $2.2M
8% The Big Wedding $1.2M

Coming Soon

—— After Earth May 31
—— Now You See Me May 31
100% The Kings of Summer May 31
89% The East May 31

The Good Girl (2002)

tomatometer

81

Average Rating: 7/10
Reviews Counted: 156
Fresh: 127 | Rotten: 29

A dark dramedy with exceptional performances from Jennifer Aniston and Jake Gyllenhaal, The Good Girl is a moving and astute look at the passions of two troubled souls in a small town.

75

Average Rating: 6.6/10
Critic Reviews: 36
Fresh: 27 | Rotten: 9

A dark dramedy with exceptional performances from Jennifer Aniston and Jake Gyllenhaal, The Good Girl is a moving and astute look at the passions of two troubled souls in a small town.

audience

53

liked it
Average Rating: 3/5
User Ratings: 65,157

My Rating

Movie Info

Director Miguel Arteta and writer Mike White, who had previously collaborated on Chuck and Buck, turn an eye toward suburban boredom with the quirky comedy The Good Girl. Jennifer Aniston stars as Justine, a woman who is feeling constrained by her life. Her husband, Phil (John C. Reilly), is a house painter who spends the majority of his time smoking marijuana with his friend Bubba (Tim Blake Nelson). Longing for something more in her life, Justine becomes involved with a younger co-worker named

R,

Drama, Comedy

Mike White

Jan 7, 2003

$13.7M

Fox Searchlight Pictures - Official Site External Icon

Cast

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All Critics (156) | Top Critics (36) | Fresh (129) | Rotten (31) | DVD (24)

A warmly satisfying comedy about dissatisfied people seeking to escape from the personal prison of their mundane lives in soulless suburbia.

March 31, 2009 Full Review Source: Variety
Variety
Top Critic IconTop Critic

I wish I could say I liked it more, but despite a smattering of priceless moments, The Good Girl gets bogged down in the very narrowness that afflicts Justine.

February 9, 2006 Full Review Source: Time Out
Time Out
Top Critic IconTop Critic

Once fans recover from the shock, they'll discover that this sitcom actress has the chops to tackle some pretty heavy stuff.

November 6, 2002 Full Review Source: Minneapolis Star Tribune
Minneapolis Star Tribune
Top Critic IconTop Critic

A sad, superior human comedy played out on the back roads of life.

August 23, 2002 Full Review Source: Sacramento Bee
Sacramento Bee
Top Critic IconTop Critic

It's soulful and unslick, and that's apparently just what [Aniston] has always needed to grow into a movie career.

August 22, 2002
Orlando Sentinel
Top Critic IconTop Critic

An absorbing, slice-of-depression life that touches nerves and rings true.

August 21, 2002
Hollywood Reporter
Top Critic IconTop Critic

Arteta's third feature is good step in the right direction, for him as a disrector and for Jennifer Anniston as an actress

June 7, 2011 Full Review Source: EmanuelLevy.Com
EmanuelLevy.Com

Jennifer Aniston is excellent in the best movie of her career.

April 29, 2009 Full Review Source: Cinema Crazed
Cinema Crazed

In Miguel Arteta's quirky indie feature, Jennifer Aniston searches for meaning and passion in a swirl of suburban malaise and ironically may have finally found a character who can reveal the shades of her talent.

July 2, 2008 Full Review Source: IGN Movies
IGN Movies

After languishing in second-banana roles in such films as Picture Perfect and Rock Star, Ms. Aniston here creates a fully realized character of surprising nuance and depth.

July 14, 2007 Full Review Source: Big Picture Big Sound
Big Picture Big Sound

In the long run, The Good Girl will be remembered more as a chance for Jennifer Aniston to wet her acting chops than for anything else.

September 30, 2005 Full Review Source: Three Movie Buffs
Three Movie Buffs

Aniston shows promising signs of a post-sitcom career with her convincing and understated dramatic work.

January 7, 2005 Full Review Source: TheMovieReport.com
TheMovieReport.com

Leaves me craving for the entree.

November 12, 2004 Full Review Source: Oregon Herald

White, who has a knack for imparting a sense of humor to his screenplays, created several minor characters who lighten the Retail Rodeo's claustrophic atmosphere.

June 23, 2004 Full Review Source: Courier-Journal (Louisville, KY)

[Aniston] manages to reveal layers of depth audiences have yet to see from her.

February 1, 2004 Full Review Source: FilmStew.com

O humor ácido e a sensibilidade do filme com relação aos seus personagens merecem aplausos - assim como a belíssima performance de Aniston.

December 4, 2003
Cinema em Cena

Aniston may not have received her much-touted Oscar nomination, but this brilliantly funny and often touching film should assure her a solid post-Friends career.

May 2, 2003 Full Review Source: Empire Magazine
Empire Magazine

Maybe Aniston should stop trying to be serious and stick with being funny, which is something she can certainly do.

May 2, 2003 Full Review Source: Sydney Morning Herald
Sydney Morning Herald

The Good Girl belongs to Aniston, who buries Rachel in style with a sweet, soulful, hangdog performance that you will be thinking of long after you leave the cinema. .

April 27, 2003 Full Review Source: Sunday Times (Australia)
Sunday Times (Australia)

Moving, insightful and thoroughly entertaining, The Good Girl takes us to the crossroads of the human heart. The question is which way to turn/

April 26, 2003 Full Review Source: Urban Cinefile
Urban Cinefile

Audience Reviews for The Good Girl

First they made "Chuck and Buck" (2000). Two years later, screenwriter Mike White and director Miguel Arteta collaborated on "The Good Girl." The highly original and piercing "Chuck and Buck" is by far the better film, but "The Good Girl" has its charms, particularly a beautiful performance from Jake Gyllenhaal as a lonely, mentally unstable college student who calls himself Holden (after the protagonist in "Catcher in the Rye").

Jennifer Aniston, in her first and last interesting film role, plays the main character, a depressed, uneducated store clerk who has an extra-marital affair with Holden that goes awry. She is married to a brainless couch potato played by John C. Reilly.

As you'd expect from this filmmaking team, there's much dark humor and deadpan comedy about small-town life. At times the spirit of Todd Solondz is channelled. But nothing really surprising or compelling is ever discovered about the characters, and the comedy grows thin after a half-hour. The actors walk around in a catatonic stupor, going way over the top to dramatize their characters' stagnation and mindlessness.

I'm not sure why it's interesting to depict everyone in the heartland as retarded. It certainly bears no relationship to the reality of the heartland, where there is a lot more diversity than that. After a while, it just seemed like easy jokes perpetrated by artists who weren't really challenging themselves.

You could think of "Good Girl" as the last mumble-core movie. I'm quite glad that this sub-genre is pretty much dead.
December 18, 2011
Bill D 2007
William Dunmyer

Super Reviewer

I didn't like it. It was so derivative yet miserable, so cheerless yet faux-introspective. Sometimes there were these departures into fantasy and I didn't know what to think of them.
April 28, 2011
jennifxu

Super Reviewer

    1. Justine Last: After living in the dark for so long, a glimpse of the light can make you giddy. Strange thoughts come into your head and you better think'em. Has a special fate been calling you and you not listening? Is there a secret message right in front of you and you're not reading it? Is this your last, best chance? Are you gonna take it? Or are you going to the grave with unlived lives in your veins?
    – Submitted by Victoria A (6 months ago)
    1. Justine Last: After living in the dark for so long, a glimpse of the light can make you giddy. Strange thoughts come into your head and you better think'em. Has a special fate been calling you and you not listening? Is there a secret message right in front of you and you're not reading it? Is this your last, best chance? Are you gonna take it? Or are you going to the grave with unlived lives in your veins?
    – Submitted by Victoria A (6 months ago)
    1. Justine Last: That day I read the story Holden had wrote for me. It was kinda different from the other ones but kinda the same. It was about a girl who was put upon, whose job is like a prison, and whose life has lost all meaning. Other people don't get her, especially her husband. One day she meets a boy who is also put upon and they fall in love. After spending their whole lives never getting got, with one look they get each other completely. In the end the girl and the boy run away together into the wilderness, never to be heard from again.
    – Submitted by Samira O (7 months ago)
    1. Phil Last: I need to get stoned
    2. Justine Last: Okay. Get stoned.
    3. Phil Last: I just gotta escape, you know? You ever feeI Iike that?
    4. Justine Last: Yeah
    5. Phil Last: Like you gotta escape?
    6. Justine Last: Yeah, I do.
    – Submitted by Samira O (7 months ago)
    1. Justine Last: How it all came down to this, only the Devil knows. Retail Rodeo is at the corner on my left. The motel is down the road to my right. I close my eyes and try to peer into the future. On my left, I saw days upon days of lipstick and ticking clocks, dirty looks and quiet whisperings. And burning secrets that just won't ever die away. And on my right, what could I picture? The blue sky, the desert earth, stretching out into the eerie infinity. A beautiful never-ending nothing.
    – Submitted by Samira O (7 months ago)
    1. Justine Last: Sometimes to get back on the road to redemption, you have to make pit stops.
    – Submitted by Samira O (7 months ago)

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Foreign Titles

  • Good Girl (FR)
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