Jersey Girl

Comment: This is a cute movie, but nothing too extraordinary. It's a sweet story about a single father who tries to figure out what's best for his life and his daughter. It has it's funny moments, particularly with Betty Aberlin as the daughter - she's great. Ben Affleck and Jennifer Lopez were surprisingly good as well. The ending is a bit typical Hollywood, but at least Will Smith plays a nice cameo.

Comment: good family movie, a modern fairy-tale romance, good vehicle for over comming tragedy, parental love, defining important family values, at time very funny, or frustrating, or sad, but wth happy ending. Strong cast, daughter cute and lovable.

Comment: Oh yeah, this flick is cute! This flick has a year's worth of cute in every scene, with the cutest seven-year-old girl stealing hearts and scenes, with George Carlin as everybody's ideal cute old alcoholic grandaddy, with Will Smith in a cute cameo appearance, with even the streets of Jersey showing their cute side, and overall, overarching overweening overtowering all, Ben Affleck! who is so blinking cute, so blanking good-looking and cute, that he can't NOT be cute, even in his moments of mean depression and/or uptown narcissism. This is a film in which even the raunchy humor is cute.

And you know what? It works. It's moderately funny, well-paced, upbeat ... a pretty good evening's entertainment.

I just learned, this week, that I have one of those "everybody-knows-everybody-within-the-sixth-degree" connections to Ben Affleck. His mother, Christopher Ann (Chris) Boldt and I were good friends and classmates in college. I met young Ben once, when he was a teenager in Cambridge MS, and I saw him in "Good Will Hunting" without making the connection. But I couldn't remember what he looked like, so I went to my local video nook and asked the video-wallah which Ben Affleck film he would recommend. "Jersey Girl" was his pick. Huh. Looks like Chris's boys - Ben and Casey - are doing okay.

Comment: In New York, the young executive Oliver "Ollie" Trinke is a successful PR of the music industry. He meets and falls in love for Gertrude Steiney, who soon gets pregnant. However, she dies in the childbirth and Ollie decides to return to his father's home in New Jersey. Pressed by the situation of lonely father, the workaholic Ollie blows-up in an important press conference and makes a fatal statement, losing his job and becoming blacklisted in his publicist career. He promises to be the "best father in the world" to the young Gertie, and stays single, grieving his beloved wife, without dating any woman for seven years and trying to retrieve a position of public relation. One day, he meets the rental clerk Maya, they become friends and she helps him to supersede his past life.

A light-hearted comedy. It's a feel good movie that never takes itself too seriously, but is very entertaining. A very good and touching movie. The all-star cast does a great job, and you can really feel the chemistry. If you aren't looking for a serious drama, then Jersey Girl is what you want.

Comment: Thought it was a good family movie. Would recommend
it to others. Really a warm friendly show.