The Good Girl

A friend recommended I watch this film and I was sceptical because it looked like another cheesy American 'comedy' ('American comedy' being an oxymoron for me lately). I must admit, the first twenty minutes surprised me. Jennifer Aniston was, for once, acting like a human being rather than the stereotypical formula of 'dim-witted adult behaving like a child', which hallmarks American comedy these days. I was impressed with Aniston's ability to shed the big grin and look like a person and her disenchanted character in the film was, to begin with, appealing and refreshing in its contrast with the 'big smile', let's be positive culture oozing from Hollywood.

My objection to the film isn't so much Jennifer Aniston's acting, but the message which the film sends to its audiences, which can be summarised as 'bored houswife, disenchanted and jaded by life in corporate-run america falls in love with cynical outsider, cheats on her well-meaning, infertile husband, then proceeds to use her lover for sex, finds herself pregnant with his child, tries to poison him [her lover], attempts to have him committed to a psychiatric institute, betrays him to the police resulting in his death, has the child and goes back to her husband'.

the strengths of the film lie in the fact that it doesn't entail its characters having to act like dim children to get laughs, but on the whole plays it straight and the black humour emerges from the tragedy of its circumstances. However, the moral message left me feeling sickened, particularly because such an insipid message is passed off in a passive, innocent fashion. The result is a terrible film made for all the wrong reasons.