Review of Very Good Girls (2013) by Thomas W — 18 Jul 2014

Very Good Girls has somehow managed to get a truly noteworthy and remarkable cast in spite of being a most mediocre, humdrum and unremarkable film itself. The movie is about two best friends who are preparing for their first year of college and in doing so decide they should probably lose their virginity before heading off to school.

They are "very good girls" after all. Their friendship is tested over the summer by various things -- work, family, uncertainty, tragedy -- but most of all by their mutual attraction to a handsome street artist they meet and befriend.

Dakota Fanning (I Am Sam) and Elizabeth Olsen (Martha Marcy May Marlene) play besties Lily and Gerry with Boyd Holbrook (Milk) playing their object of affection who ends up favoring one of the girls to the other.

Richard Dreyfus (Jaws), Ellen Barkin (Sea of Love), Clark Gregg (The Avengers) and Demi Moore (Ghost) play parents while Peter Sarsgaard (An Education) co-stars as Lily's boss and Kiernan Shipka ('Mad Men') as her younger sister.

The first-time director, Naomi Foner, just happens to be the mother of the Gyllenhaal siblings which most likely helps explain why this talented cast signed onto such a pedestrian, over-done script. The story is nothing special -- and has been told many times -- but the acting in VGG is solid.

Everyone involved is singularly better than the film as a whole.