Review: Jennifer’s Body
Director: Karyn Kusama
Year: 2009
Country: USA
The first time I saw Juno I enjoyed it. It was quirky, fun and sported a solid cast that was in some way well-versed in the art of acting. Even (relative) newcomer Ellen Page was impressive, handling Diablo Cody’s incredibly modern and far from evergreen dialogue with panache, delivering each ridiculous line with a level of comfort that made her perfect for the role. Subsequent viewings were not so kind, as I began to grow bored with Cody’s attempts at being clever and for some reason thinking she knew how teenagers of the modern era acted and spoke. Her sophomore film, Jennifer’s Body, is more of the same yet conspicuously lacking the endearing plot and well-trained actors of Juno, replaced with the end result of a back alley abortion performed with a rusty clothes hangar.
Jennifer’s Body is the anti-male manifesto of Diablo Cody. Megan Fox plays Jennifer Check, a ridiculously named raven-haired bombshell who utilizes her sexuality to get what she wants, including the rights to seemingly have her asshole violated by a contemporary rock band after the bar in which they were playing burns down. After disappearing into the night, where we eventually learn she was sacrificed to the Devil for fame, fortune and a hit song that makes Nickelback look like The Beatles, she returns as a demon, because you can’t die if you’re the victim of a Satanic ritual and not a virgin. It’s in the fine print. She returns as a succubus, intent on eating all the males at her high school for no discernible reason while her nerdy best friend Anita “Needy” Lesnicky tries to stop her. One hundred and five minutes of how not to write a movie ensues.
While the plot certainly leaves something to be desired, nearly every problem associated with Jennifer’s Body can be directly contributed to Diablo Cody’s dialogue. This woman has absolutely no grasp on reality, convinced all teenagers live in their own self-involved world and communicating through a made up language indecipherable to anyone with a fully developed brain or lacking the latest book of Cody-speak. Every single line is peppered with faux-teenage slang, itself an affront to teenagers existing on this plane of existence, and spouted out by wooden characters. While Amanda Seyfriend is adorable, her pathetic voice overs and “good girl” persona is elevated to near Oscar-caliber when compared with that of Megan Fox, a vapid, shallow husk of an actress made all the more insufferable by Cody’s nonsense dialogue. I have seen better acting and more believable dialogue from characters in snuff films. The only tolerable acting in the film comes from veteran actor J. K. Simmons, who plays a nerdy teacher with a hook for a hand with awkward aplomb. Even the usually funny Amy Sedaris, whose role was relegated to a mere three minutes of screen time, was rendered useless by Cody’s stupid fucking dialogue.
The dialogue aside, the film barely stands on its own as nothing more than a loose collection of scenes designed to show off Megan Fox’s assets. Awkward sex scenes between Needy her boyfriend Chip and an extended lesbian make-out session complete with requisite close-ups of spit being swapped and skin being bared. By this point the film had eclipsed just being a “bad” film and is in the running for one of the worst films ever made. Not even lesbians can save it. Throughout the film we’re given a soundtrack hand picked by MTV to showcase just how in tune Cody is with high school students, with most songs appearing at inopportune times or were hardly appropriate for the scenes in which they appeared. Jennifer’s Body lacks anything that can be considered a redeeming quality.
Diablo Cody’s career is a Cinderella story: a writer-cum-stripper-cum-journalist-cum screenwriter who wowed audiences with her feature writing debut and even won and Oscar to boot. To think she could repeat the same success while learning from her mistakes is apparently wishful thinking, as Diablo Cody’s latest film is a pathetic attempt at cementing herself among those with the marked ability to write funny dialogue while still maintaining an air of credibility. In this she failed miserably, dragging the story, however thin it may have been, into the depths of Hell where Diablo Cody’s career belongs.
There is a fate worth than death, and it’s called Jennifer’s Body.
The first one is more or less a moot point. I enjoyed Juno the first time I saw it, then all subsequent viewings rendered me incapable of appreciating its zany dialogue, unbelievable characters and bizarre psuedo-pedophiliac subplot starring Jason Bateman. Despite this, there is nothing stopping everyone’s favorite stripper-cum-writer from banging out a solid comedic horror flick, no matter how ridiculous the plot may be.
The interblags have been all atwitter over the forthcoming release of Juno scribe Diablo Cody’s next film, a horror-comedy titled Jennifer’s Body. Aside from simply being another horror comedy, it stars Megan Fox, the Angelina Jolie doppelganger and star of the Transformers films, a fact seemingly more important than anything else related to the film. For most, this is the most appealing part of the movie, as there was once a rumor going around that she would be naked in it. Sadly, the rumor has been proven false, and once again we are robbed of a wonderful distraction to her terrible acting.
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