The grating sense of commercial calculation in Jersey Girl consistently undercuts Smith's fine writing.
Comment
03/27/04
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Jersey Girl (2004)
41
%
Tomatometer
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Reviews Counted:167
Fresh:68
Rotten:99
Average Rating:5.3/10
Consensus: Full of cloyingly sentimental cliches.
Theatrical Release:Mar 26, 2004 Wide
Box Office: $25,197,718
Synopsis: Breaking from his signature slacker-underdog films like CLERKS, MALLRATS, and CHASING AMY, Kevin Smith delivers the feel-good family movie JERSEY GIRL. While Smith's pert one-liners and wryly... [More]
Starring: Ben Affleck, Raquel Castro, Liv Tyler, George Carlin
Director: Kevin Smith
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Reviews for Jersey Girl
Everything about the movie, from its premise of a single father raising a kid all alone to its school-musical finale, has the bland taste of reheated leftovers.
03/27/04
Inspired by Smith's own awe and amazement at being a father, the movie is modest and entertaining, with a minimum of sentimental goo, and it demands little of us except a good-natured willingness to go with it.
03/27/04
Top Critic[Kevin Smith] has mistaken maturity for old Hollywood cliches and conventions.
03/26/04
Smith isn't very adept at shaping or balancing the weepy scenes, but there's a sense that this material is coming, unfiltered, straight from his heart.
03/26/04
Ben Affleck is understandable. But how did Kevin Smith wind up behind something as trite and ordinary as this insipid tale?
03/26/04
The filmmaker drowns his trademark edgy stew of smutty humor, stiff acting and dime-store insight into human nature with a gravy of glutinous bathos, making for a singularly unpalatable dish.
03/26/04
Top CriticThis kind of weepy material works in the hands of melodrama masters like Douglas Sirk or Pedro Almodovar. But here, it's over-the-top and it's just horrible.
03/26/04
Top CriticSmith is looking more and more like a developing major talent, so it could be years until we get a handle on this movie's legacy.
03/26/04
Top CriticIt's an enjoyable cruise down the Garden State Parkway, and Affleck and Castro are charming companions.
03/26/04
Watching Jersey Girl is akin to being smothered by a basket of warm puppies.
03/26/04
Top CriticIt's saved by an unusually charming child actor: Castro, who has a voice like a pan flute and a sweetly low-key screen presence.
03/26/04
Smith is trying to say something heartfelt, even as he's using formulas that are unworthy of him. Thus, Jersey Girl is a step, not a misstep.
03/26/04
Top CriticSmith, reaching into his most tender feelings, comes up with hairballs of hokum.
03/26/04
With Jersey Girl, [Smith] stopped fooling around, finally got his act together and made a real film. For once, he deserves the moniker 'filmmaker.'
03/26/04
The point about parental responsibility is worth raising -- and Smith and company raise it with good humor and affection.
03/26/04
I'll take Manhattan.
03/26/04
Smith never makes us believe in this story the way he clearly does.
03/26/04
Sweet and conventional, with just enough wacky Kevin Smith moments to keep it going.
03/26/04
Affleck, Tyler and Castro ... have a warm chemistry that melts away much of the ill will engendered by the first half-hour.
03/26/04
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