Jennifer's Body
Directed by Karyn Kusama
Two and One Half Stars
Written by a woman, directed by a woman, and starring the standard frat boy’s definition of “the” woman, Karyn Kusama’s “Jennifer’s Body” is a gleeful feminist revenge fantasy with an ear for slang and an eye for blood. Diablo Cody’s follow-up to her Oscar winning script for “Juno” deals in flamboyant fashion with the dangers of objectifying women. It won’t likely win any awards for subtlety.
Megan Fox stars in the title role as Jennifer, a voluptuous high school bombshell with a healthy superiority complex. Jennifer rules over her high school in Devil’s Kettle with a swing of her hips and a seductive bat of her eyelashes that hints at a mean spirited joke only she knows the punch line to.
Her best friend is Needy (Amanda Seyfried). Appropriately named, she’s the dime store nerd of the school in every way except that her best friend is the head cheerleader. One night Jennifer drags Needy to a seedy bar on the outskirts of town where a nobody punk band with a “salty” lead singer is putting on a show. When the bar burns down, the band members take Jennifer away in their van (wouldn’t you know it) and she returns to Needy’s house that night blood-soaked and spewing black bile all over the kitchen. It takes forever to get that out from under your fingernails. I hate that.
From here “Jennifer’s Body” settles down into the conventions of a fair slasher flick, with Jennifer picking off boys in the school one by one and eating them for sustenance. Their deaths grow less and less tragic to the numbed residents of Devil’s Kettle. We must be told this. We’d never really get a sense of the community otherwise.
This is where the satire of Cody’s screenplay wears thin. Jennifer seems to represent the objectified woman lashing out against her male objectifiers, and Needy represents the homely woman objectified be her more ideal female counterparts, but Cody’s characters are too disconnected from their society to comment on it.
One could swear up and down that the town of Devil’s Kettle doesn’t exist at all. We only see one street in town, and that street only once. The school is out in the woods, and the bar Jennifer and Needy visit is farther out there still. I’m guessing the parents are yet one stop further.
Jennifer is supposed to be the most popular girl in school, but no one seems to pay much attention to her, or to her friend. Even their peculiar teacher Mr. Wroblewski (J.K. Simmons) tries his best to pretend the two of them aren’t in the room. Needy’s detached narration speaks of the residents of Devil’s Kettle as if they were from another planet. They can’t have too much of a beef with these people. They’re all minding their own business.
One must admit however, that the casting of Megan Fox is an obvious stroke of genius. There isn’t an actress working today who has developed such a hollow image in the public eye. No one knows a thing about her other than the fact that she is beautiful. She’s an ideal choice for a high school bombshell that men pursue without regard to her motives.
Fox pulls it off for the most part, but she can’t quite bring the same life to the hyper-hipster dialog that’s always present in Diablo Cody’s writing. Cody used this same cutesy jive in “Juno” to create a unique, identifiable, and fully realized character, but here she seems to be hiding behind it. The characters in “Jennifer’s Body” never quite make it off the page, perhaps because there’s nowhere to go from there.
“Jennifer’s Body” is pretty shallow entertainment, and the thousands of twenty-something guys who go just to ogle Miss Fox are only going to reinforce the ideas that Cody’s screenplay is trying to satirize. That’s the lesson of the day, I guess. If you’re going to comment on a society, make sure they’re listening, and if you’re going to sacrifice a virgin, make sure she’s a flippin’ virgin.
Megan Fox stars in the title role as Jennifer, a voluptuous high school bombshell with a healthy superiority complex. Jennifer rules over her high school in Devil’s Kettle with a swing of her hips and a seductive bat of her eyelashes that hints at a mean spirited joke only she knows the punch line to.
Her best friend is Needy (Amanda Seyfried). Appropriately named, she’s the dime store nerd of the school in every way except that her best friend is the head cheerleader. One night Jennifer drags Needy to a seedy bar on the outskirts of town where a nobody punk band with a “salty” lead singer is putting on a show. When the bar burns down, the band members take Jennifer away in their van (wouldn’t you know it) and she returns to Needy’s house that night blood-soaked and spewing black bile all over the kitchen. It takes forever to get that out from under your fingernails. I hate that.
From here “Jennifer’s Body” settles down into the conventions of a fair slasher flick, with Jennifer picking off boys in the school one by one and eating them for sustenance. Their deaths grow less and less tragic to the numbed residents of Devil’s Kettle. We must be told this. We’d never really get a sense of the community otherwise.
This is where the satire of Cody’s screenplay wears thin. Jennifer seems to represent the objectified woman lashing out against her male objectifiers, and Needy represents the homely woman objectified be her more ideal female counterparts, but Cody’s characters are too disconnected from their society to comment on it.
One could swear up and down that the town of Devil’s Kettle doesn’t exist at all. We only see one street in town, and that street only once. The school is out in the woods, and the bar Jennifer and Needy visit is farther out there still. I’m guessing the parents are yet one stop further.
Jennifer is supposed to be the most popular girl in school, but no one seems to pay much attention to her, or to her friend. Even their peculiar teacher Mr. Wroblewski (J.K. Simmons) tries his best to pretend the two of them aren’t in the room. Needy’s detached narration speaks of the residents of Devil’s Kettle as if they were from another planet. They can’t have too much of a beef with these people. They’re all minding their own business.
One must admit however, that the casting of Megan Fox is an obvious stroke of genius. There isn’t an actress working today who has developed such a hollow image in the public eye. No one knows a thing about her other than the fact that she is beautiful. She’s an ideal choice for a high school bombshell that men pursue without regard to her motives.
Fox pulls it off for the most part, but she can’t quite bring the same life to the hyper-hipster dialog that’s always present in Diablo Cody’s writing. Cody used this same cutesy jive in “Juno” to create a unique, identifiable, and fully realized character, but here she seems to be hiding behind it. The characters in “Jennifer’s Body” never quite make it off the page, perhaps because there’s nowhere to go from there.
“Jennifer’s Body” is pretty shallow entertainment, and the thousands of twenty-something guys who go just to ogle Miss Fox are only going to reinforce the ideas that Cody’s screenplay is trying to satirize. That’s the lesson of the day, I guess. If you’re going to comment on a society, make sure they’re listening, and if you’re going to sacrifice a virgin, make sure she’s a flippin’ virgin.
Rollan Schott
September 21, 2009
Originally Featured in the Daily Nebraskan
No comments:
Post a Comment