All kidding aside, reactions to Jennifer's Body are almost entirely split down gender lines, with each side's reaction being quite extreme. I'm the first too admit that I find movies or TV shows with female protagonists to be less enjoyable than ones with males, but I like to think that I am a smart enough moviegoer that I can still watch a critique a movie where the two main characters are female. I believe that if the movie had been called John's Body and starred that messy haired, English asshole and the good looking Indian guy from Twilight, I would still feel the same way about it, and the girls (real girls, not dumb Twilighters) would dislike it as well. Maybe that's because the relationship between two girl best friends is so much different than that of two guy best friends, or maybe it's because this movie isn't actually good, but is just written in a way that girls will love it.
I've also made no secret that I am neither a Diablo Cody or Juno fan. There is a fine line between original and dumb, and I see both of Cody and her brainchild to be standing on the dumb side. It's kinda sad, because I think she could be a great writer. She has good characters and some really good dialogue, but she also takes it too far, and to the point that anyone with a brain gets kicked out of the movie. JB suffers from the same Cody-esque dialogue, though we only have to suffer through it during conversations between the two leads. People have tried to rationalize it by saying that it's supposed to be over the top and fun, to which I respond that it's neither over the top nor fun, just stupid. There are times when other characters in the movie poke fun at the dialogue, so the over the top argument might make sense, if not not for those same characters using even stupider dialogue five seconds later. Seeing this movie just proves that anything good that came out of Juno was from Jason Reitman's direction, and not Cody's Oscar winning screenplay (I just threw up a little).
While JB is being hailed as a horror comedy, it is only half of that. It is a comedy that riffs on horror tropes, without having any actual horror in it. Drag Me to Hell was a horror comedy and is ten thousand times better than this. JB is more of Scary Movie, but with no black people. There are only two moments that try to be horror, and the key word there is try. They are so set-up that you know exactly what's coming, and then it's not even well-executed. It's clear that the director has no idea how to handle the tone of these supposedly scary scenes. Then we don't even get to see the kills. They either occur off screen or are shown in shadow puppets and it's all just a giant tease with no payoff.
Where girls seem to be digging the movie and I seem to be panning it is on the relationship between the two best friends, Megan Fox and Amanda Seyfriend. I'm a fan of Fox despite what she says about Michael Bay and I think Seyfriend is one of the more underrated actresses in Hollywood. At least I can say that they both deliver good performances. Fox proves she isn't just the piece of eye-candy Bay has made her out to be, and that she can convincingly play a beautiful, slutty, bitch (who would have ever guessed?). She delivers most of the dialogue well, but there are times when she has to be menacing that are laughably bad. Seyfried delivers a better performance, but she also has more to work with. Where I have the problem is that I found their relationship to be entirely implausible. Aside from the fact that we're told they're best friends, nothing on screen shows that. So they sit next to each other in class and they make out in the bedroom, but there was connection between them that I could see, which is a problem because all of the emotion comes from buying into their friendship. The climax of the movie invokes this idea of them being best friends in a way that I found to be so unbelievably corny, but my female counterparts have said it was soul crushing in its magnitude.
To really prove that is a male oriented blog (I can't help how I think), I want to say that my two favorite performances were by Adam Brody and Kyle Gallner. Everyone knows Brody from The OC (well, not Zach, but he's just too much of contrarian), and he does a similar schtick here, but also does a lot more. He was also the most interesting character when he talks about his motivations and what he'll do to be famous. Brody is truly great and Gallner (a Veronica Mars and The Shield alum) is quite good as the goth student who becomes a focus of Jennifer's attention.
Sadly, Jennifer's Body has no horror, and it's comedy is overshadowed by pretentious garbage that is veiled as some sort of genius. To really sum up my thoughts, I'll give it to you the way Diablo Cody would write it: "I totally wanted Jennifer's Body to be super salty, but the double dash of green green jello just couldn't juice the kool-aid. Honest to blog. Something something dot org."
Editor's note: If you want to check out a less male perspective, check out Erudite Chick's review of Jennifer's Body over at All Thing Fangirl. It's basically the opposite of everything I said, but it's still good. Also, Scarlet Scribe has a great one you can read here. (We debated and she handed the king his ass.)
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