Film: Daddy dearest

Kevin Smith's paternal sentiment supplants slacker humor in

By Jeannette Catsoulis

Sooner or later, we all grow up--even Kevin Smith, writer-director of such fastidiously inert slacker comedies as Clerks (1994) and Mallrats (1995). "They're not there to shop. They're not there to work. They're just there," ran Mallrats' tagline; but it could just as easily have functioned as a description of any one of Smith's early characters, young men and women in dead-end jobs (or no jobs at all), unburdened by responsibilities or ambitions and dissecting comic books as if they were the Dead Sea Scrolls.

Like a backlash to the late-'80s yuppie movie (Wall Street, Working Girl, The Secret of My Success), Smith's films made underachieving cool. He connected with kids eager to escape, if only briefly, the college/career/conspicuous consumption refrain harped on by parents and society in general. His characters were talkative, passive-aggressive rebels--they took root in small lives and refused to budge. Yet beneath the Rabelaisian jokes and meandering dialogue these movies were deeply critical of a society offering a homogeneous vision of success and few options to kids disinclined to join the corporate herd. Like filmmaker Michael Moore--with whom he shares more than just girth and fashion sense--Smith has always known he would catch more flies with humor than with vitriol.

Jersey Girl comes from a more mature vantage point yet manages to reach the same conclusion: There are more important things in life than a job, however high-flown. Ben Affleck plays Ollie Trinke, a powerful Manhattan publicist who would be ashamed of his blue-collar roots if he allotted any time for self-reflection. Left holding the baby when his wife dies (a refreshingly natural, and brief, appearance by Jennifer Lopez), Ollie scuttles back to his childhood home in New Jersey to dump the infant on Dad (George Carlin), a sanitation worker with a Greek chorus of neighborhood buddies eager to be called "uncle." But when Ollie suffers a public meltdown, the stage is set for the lesson the audience has seen coming from the moment J.Lo sighed her last, lingering breath.

Experiencing Jersey Girl is like being kidnapped by Hallmark and forced to undergo reprogramming. The movie is unashamedly corny and sensationally sentimental, every scene figuratively encased in a heart-shaped frame. Ollie's daughter, Gertie (even the names invite a finger-down-the-throat mime), now a well-adjusted 8-year-old, is played by Raquel Castro with terrifying aplomb and an uncanny resemblance to Lopez; but--like so many movie and prime-time offspring--it's clear she's the adult. An atrociously miscalculated scene where she and Ollie perform an excerpt from Sweeney Todd, supposedly for a school concert, is presented with the flamboyant production values of a Broadway hit. P.S. #143 it's not.

As for the bland and boring Affleck, his ongoing ability to find work is one of the great mysteries of modern cinema. (Even Carlin, in his most substantial film role so far, steals their scenes.) But the great surprise of Jersey Girl is Liv Tyler's warm, relaxed performance as a kicky video store clerk with a lubricious tongue and an intellectual interest in Ollie's porn-rental habits. Her character's main purpose may be to get Ollie's blood flowing again, but Tyler's attack on Ollie's self-imposed celibacy is so irresistible she gives the entire picture a much-needed lift.

In the film's production notes, Smith admits Jersey Girl is his most personal film to date, the work of a man amazed by parenthood and an unfamiliar contentment. The movie is meant to prove how much he adores his wife, his daughter, his father and his New Jersey roots. What it really proves is that contented people should never make movies.