Review of The Good Girl (2002) by Craigh. — 20 Sep 2002

[Potential Spoilers Omitted] I think most people will agree that this movie depicted the mundane lives of some fairly unsuccessful people. Great! . . but what else? It was very humorous, and the scattered jokes provided much needed comic relief.

But what else? What is this movie really trying to say? I don't see anything. I started out feeling bad for Justine, and was rooting for her as the heroine of the film. But wait. . . it turns out that about half way through the movie, she has made several unexcusable, heart-wrenching decisions.

After her accepteptance of blackmail "rape" by Bubba I could no longer root for Justine. In fact, I didn't even like her or in the least feel bad for her. Justine's problems were her own doing, and she hadn't done anything to try and solve them.

So who do I root for? Who provides the substance for this film? No one. . . there isn't a single hero or heroine. Does the baby make up for the rest of her depressing mistakes? Has she redeemed herself by starting a family that otherwise wasn't ever going to start? No! .

...... Maybe the baby gives her a chance to start over? Not at all! There is so little character development that it isn't clear if her feelings have changed for her husband. ..... To me, the baby only accentuated the point that her life wasn't going anywhere and that she wasn't going to do anything to change it.

I'm not trying to say that movies shouldn't be depressing, but movies should contain substance. Overall, this movie provided me with 93 minutes in which I watched a person singlehandedly screw up their whole life (two lives if you count Tom) by making completely immoral and generally poor decisions.

What does this tell us? You can really screw up your life by making bad decisions? I think we already knew that. . . It sucks to not have an education? I think we already knew that too. . . We should think about the consequences of our actions? .

. .