The Good Girl | | Cast : | Jennifer Aniston, Jake Gyllenhaal | | Director : | Miguel Arteta | | Studio : | Twentieth Century Fox Home Video | | Format : | Color, Closed-captioned, Widescreen, Dolby | | Released Date : | January 01, 2002 | | DVD Released Date : | June 01, 2004 | | Language : | English (Dubbed), English (Subtitled), Spanish (Subtitled), English (Original Language) | | Audience Rating : | R (Restricted) | | | BUY THIS DVD FROM AMAZON |
Customer Reviews
| Rating |  | | Date | July 10, 2005 | | Summary | I Loved It! | Content
 | I first saw this film because Jake Gylenhaal was becoming more and more popular and i wanted to see all of his films. I was not expecting a whole lot out of this film but i was shocked when i ended up loving it! Hardly anyone hs even heard of this film because it was a more independant film which was shown at the Sundance Film Festival, but it deserves recognition. I would recommend that anyone who enjoys dark and insightful films to see this. It is a wonderful film with great performances including Jennifer Aniston, Jake Gyllenhaal, John C. Reiley, and Tim Blake Nelson. I hope you enjoy it as much as I did. |
| Rating | | | Date | May 17, 2005 | | Summary | Good performances, strange movie | Content
| This is one of those movies that has the power to make me uncomfortable. That is a rarity. I saw this movie on Oxygen and thought I'd watch a few minutes of it because I had never seen it. I wish I had kept flipping channels.
Jennifer Aniston gave a strong performance as a married woman stuck in a dead end retail job in a small town. Her character seems reserved and emotionally blocked off, but Aniston handels it well. Her husband is a none-the-wiser lummocks who genuinely seems to care for her. Through out the film, I kept wanting her to confess about the tasteless affair she has with an emotionally disturbed young man who works with her at her retail job. The audience is lulled into a feeling of "no one knows about us", but before long, comments from co-workers and the security guard flat out tell her they saw this ill-fated pair in the store stockroom.
Some aspects of this film make me sick, but I was impressed with the performances. I wouldn't recommend this film for the story, but I would for the performances. |
| Rating | | | Date | May 01, 2005 | | Summary | didn't like this at all | Content
| I didn't like 'the good girl' - it should have been titled, 'i use people for my own good.' Justine makes Tom/Holden think she's in love with him and wants to be with him and then suddenly decides she wants to go back to her husband. She knew up front Holden was disturbed and only pushed him over the edge anyway. She won in the end with the baby and her husband's forgiveness.
I only like some of the references and/or similarities to "Catcher in the Rye" and the movie felt a lot like the Cohen brothers film (which I love), but overall I was disappointed with it. Glad it was on TV for free. |
| Rating | | | Date | April 21, 2005 | | Summary | Not your typical 'Friends' vehicle | Content
| Jennifer Aniston's movie career hasn't amounted to a hill of beans, mostly due to her inability to pick good roles. Here though, whether through the luck of a blind squirrel finding an acorn now and then or better career management, she's honed in on a great anti-'Friends' tonic with Mike White's finely-tuned script. [White also appears as Aniston's bible study-going buddy.]
The best thing to say about 'The Good Girl' is that it won't appeal to fans of Aniston's 'Rachel' persona. That's a 'go' signal for all of us fans of smaller, Independent Spirit-sized releases who would otherwise tend to lump an Aniston-led film into the category of "Friends vehicle. Won't see." |
| Rating | | | Date | March 22, 2005 | | Summary | misfits | Content
| All the performances in this film shine, which is what makes the film compelling. Genuinely and pleasantly surprising was Jennifer Aniston's performance as Justine, the bored wife of a burned out stoner/house painter. Justine works as a dazed discount store employee, always dreaming of bigger and better things, lamenting the things she could or should have done in her life instead of marrying Phil (John C. Reilly). She is smarter than her small-town trappings and finds herself idly dreaming and longing for something different. Enter the melancholy "Holden" (Jake Gyllenhaal), whose real name is "Tom" (but this, he says, is his slave name). He is a writer, a dreamer, and finally someone who seems to "get" Justine. Their friendship leads rather quickly to a passionate and torrid affair, which allows Justine to imagine a more exciting life. Still, though, despite the excitement, Justine is an adult with a good deal more life experience than "Holden"; much of his optimism is unmasked as being naivete; Justine recognizes that their relationship cannot go on forever, although she acknowledges conflicting feelings on the matter. Her marriage with Phil is never going to go anywhere. When Phil's best friend reveals that he knows about Justine's secret affair, he makes demands on her. In many ways, her secret affair allows her to be manipulated into unpleasant or unsavory circumstances. Unfortunately, things do unravel with tragic consequences; though Justine's life is changed, most circumstances go right on being the same (in large part because her husband is too stupid to understand anything). In essence, this film just cements Jake Gyllenhaal's reputation as a great young actor with versatility and range, and is a breakout role for Aniston, who might otherwise have been typecast as "Rachel" for the rest of her career. |
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