The Good Girl
Director: Miguel Arteta
Year Released: 2002
Rating: 1.0
Malickian voice-over + life-is-hell tone + fleeting attempts at humor = extreme phoniness (it's only appropriate Catcher in the Rye gets mentioned, although White's reason for including it backfires on him). It's so staid and unwilling to take risks (for better or worse) that it didn't get to me one way or another; it just sits there, like Aniston's unflinching face, waiting for you to find poetry in the images of working-class alienation or sympathy in the 'emptiness of existence.' If we're supposed to see the lead as some pitiable martyr (like the title suggests), someone's just going to have to produce a better screenplay with more complicated characters.
