Director: Karyn Kusama
Starring: Megan Fox, Amanda Seyfried, Johnny Simmons, Adam Brody
I saw Jennifer’s Body in its third and final screening at the Toronto film festival and found it to be a pleasant surprise. This is a
comedy/horror in the vein of an American Werewolf in London, and this genre has more than its share of video store dust collectors. Two names give this one a shot of avoiding this fate.
One is Diablo Cody’s sparkling writing which though sometimes over the top, is interesting, amusing and at least makes us old geezers over 25, feel like we are in on the hippest new teen slang. Whether we are or not, how would I know? I haven’t spoken to a teen since the last time I got a 2am Big Mac at a drive through.
The other advantage Jennifer’s Body has is, well, Jennifer’s body. Hiring Transformers star, Megan Fox, has gotten this film a lot of attention and even more so when word got out on what a sexy role the sultry beauty would be playing. She looks good (pronounced in this case as goooooooood) and puts in a pretty solid performance besides. This girl may still have a future when she stops spouting off yawning filler dialog next to stupid alien warbots that somehow felt that they should earn some extra endorsement coin to cover travel costs by turning into the latest model year of cars sold on a planet 800 zillion years from where they’re from. Sorry. Guess I sprinted off onto a raving tangent for a second there.
Jennifer’s Body is the story of a couple of teenage friends. The applicably named everygirl is Needy (played by Amanda Seyfried), who finds herself torn between her sweet boyfriend, Chip (Johnny Simmons) and her hot, school ruling best friend, Jennifer Check sizzled up by the aforementioned Ms. Fox. The two friends head off to a local bar where Jennifer is hot to hook up with a visiting band. They both have a night of their lives, but not in a good way. All young women at this age are undergoing a lot of changes, but not usually as extreme as Jennifer who might also be some kind of bloodthirsty, short-skirted monster. Its up to Needy to figure out what’s going on.
With equal parts comedy, horror, gore and a little suspense mixed in, this film tries to do a lot, but never tries to take itself seriously, which in the end saves it from sinking into the crap pile. Some decent performers firing out Cody’s Juno-style dialog make this one worth catching.
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