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Jennifer’s Body (R)

Friday I saw Jennifer’s Body with the crew. I want to give a shout out to the general manager at Rave Motion Pictures in West Chester. She made fun of us in the ticket line. It’s okay though, because she’s hot and that’s what really matters.

Now let’s get this out of the way right here: There is no nudity in this movie. Megan Fox does not get naked. Amanda Seyfried (who?) does not get naked. They do make out, but nobody shows any mams or clams to the camera. If the TV commercials made you believe otherwise then you are a fool, Sir – a damned fool.

Yeah, I know it was a Hole song. I also know Hole was a terrible band.

Besides the whole no nudity thing, this is actually a surprisingly okay movie. It has some issues. Diablo Cody (Juno) was obviously allowed to go completely unrestrained writing the script, and so much of the dialogue is absolutely bizarre (more than Juno) and there are many gratuitous indie music name drops and inserts.

There is some serious false advertising going on here too. Jennifer’s Body is not a horror movie. Nor is it particularly sexy or risque. There is only one part of this movie that is even remotely frightening (and props goes to Megan Fox, who can be scarier than you would think). Jennifer’s Body is very much a comedy. It is a comedy that makes fun of Satan, teenage girls, slasher movies and school tragedies.

Yeah, you heard me. This movie pokes fun of school tragedies. It’s about time somebody did. Candlelight vigils? I never understood those. What are they standing there for? It’s not accomplishing anything.

You know, as I’m writing this I’m changing my mind. I’m thinking Jennifer’s Body was actually pretty awesome. It’s awesome because it’s so careless. It’s pretty clear that the filmmakers got to do what they wanted with it and they don’t give a shit if you don’t like it. I like that attitude.

Jennifer’s Body is the story of Needy Lesnicky (Amanda Seyfried). Needy is a plain-jane nerdy girl in a redneck high school in the boonies. Needy’s BFF is Jennifer Check (Megan Fox), the hot cheerleader everybody wants. Jennifer gets the hots for an indie band front man named Nikolai Wolf (Adam Brody) and demands that Needy go see the band at a local dive bar. Nikolai and the band take Jennifer out to the woods and use her as a virgin sacrifice to Satan so they can get a record deal. Unfortunately, they missed the part about Jennifer not being a virgin (SOOOOO not a virgin). Anyway, Jennifer comes back possessed by a demon and she must consume human flesh to survive. She does this by luring boys to secluded places and eating them. Needy is the only one who can put all of this together, so it’s up to her to stop Jennifer.

The performances are all pretty strong. Amanda Seyfried is great, but when is Amanda Seyfried bad? Megan Fox is fantastic. She plays a dumb, hot, evil, slutty girl incredibly well. I’m not sure what that says about her, but I hope she takes it as a compliment. Her acting has improved mightily since Transformers. J.K. Simmons is in this movie too and for the first time in recorded history he plays a character other than J. Jonah Jameson. He’s good though. He plays a high school teacher that has more in common with Ned Flanders than any of the students. Every school has that guy.

I only had two problems with this movie. One – the ending lacked a good punch. Simple enough. Two – It doesn’t develop Jennifer well.  It gets to the part where Jennifer’s hot and evil and she eats boys, but it doesn’t seem to go anywhere from there. There isn’t much exposition about the supernatural forces that drive her. It isn’t her fault that this happened either, so she’s sort of a tragic character, but it’s hard to sympathize with her because she’s so shallow and the movie spends so little time with her. You can’t hate her and you can’t feel bad for her, so you’re left being confused.

There are some subtle subtexts here too. It’s implied that Jennifer is secretly in love with Needy and jealousy is her real motive for some of the things she does. Also there are a lot of parallels between the conflict in the movie (which is outwardly violent) and the conflicts all teenage girls have with their friends. Needy also symbolically severs her attachment to Jennifer (with a blatant and awkward gesture that doesn’t work all that well in the movie).

It’s funny. As much as I think there is below the surface of Jennifer’s Body, I doubt anybody will ever take it seriously enough to think about.

“I can’t believe it only cost 9.75!” – Nate