Kevin Smith's Crime Against Humanity

Kevin Smith’s Jersey Girl is a film by a man who hasn’t so much sold out as he has revealed that he has no idea what he’s selling. Because make no mistake, friends, what Smith is selling in this cloying embarrassment of a movie are giant wheels of cheese curdling in a vat of jokes that plop like tiny turds.

I just caught the thing on cable, and I promptly went to Duane Reade to buy some of that abrasive lava soap to scrape the ick off.

My visceral reaction to Jersey Girl arises from my general admiration for Smith. Clerks rules. Chasing Amy was funny and almost touching in dramatizing its implausible premise. Dogma was smart and funny if also more than a little pointless and esoteric. Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back was an entertaining and shameless gift to his fans that had the distinction of reuiniting Mark Hammil and Carrie Fisher. It is in the spirit of tough love that I explore how many ways this one should never have been made.

What Smith calls his paean to fatherhood, Jersey Girl tells the story of criminally unlikable fancypants PR maven Ben Affleck who loses J. Lo — not like in real life, to her narcissistic hardheadedness and loathsome screech-singing — but to a deadly complication in childbirth.

Which gives us the chance to watch Affleck violently shake off the consoling hand of the baby-and-bad-news-delivering obstetrician and break down in one of the more unbelievable hand-on-face, crumple-to-the-floor crying jags in film history.

But not to be outdone even by himself, Affleck tops this grotesque display of nonhuman emotion with an obscenely long and treacly pledge to his newborn motherless daughter. That it contains Kevin Smith’s patented intellectualized dialogue only confirms a suspicion that no sentient being on this earth speaks or cries like Big Ben does in this scene. It is pure horseshit, and the kind you’d expect Smith to spend nights on his couch viciously mocking with a bong and Jason Mewes.

But this movie just piles on the clichés, using them as a framework to hang occasionally interesting interactions and dialogue between the despicable Affleck and more loveable folks like George Carlin as his father, Liv Tyler as his adorable, earthy, too-good-to-be-true love interest, and Raquel Castro as his irrepressible moppet of a daughter, now aged 7 years.

In a profoundly derivative setup, Affleck must choose between his high-flying Manhattan life and the comfortable, small-town family life his daughter loves in New Jersey. He must rediscover his true calling: Public Relations! Somehow Smith neglects to treat this profession as the scourge it is, ennobling the shoveling of both shit and asphalt in a scene where Affleck cons a strangely pliant crowd of townspeople into permitting a necessary, though disruptive public works project. Note that Smith fades down the volume on our hero PR wizard’s personal little renaissance in favor of inspirational soundtrack music. Even he couldn’t think of anything worthwhile or inspiring for his character to say.


The movie ends with Affleck aborting his big-time comeback job interview in the city and racing against the clock to arrive at his daughter’s school pageant in time to join her on stage, something so tired and expected it arrives like a pre-programmed sleepwalker wandering into his own surprise party.

This film touches no real nerves other than those that were forged into the sturdy spine of Hollywood’s nervous system. It tells a story so time-tested it comes with no assembly (or rational mind) required.

Obviously, you need to shut down your higher faculties when watching a movie like this. Because someone as smart as Kevin Smith might know that if PR superstar Lizzie Grubman can serve 60 days in jail for running down 16 people in her SUV and wind up with a healthy clientele and a new MTV reality show, Big Ben’s character can probably find a gig after badmouthing Will Smith.

And don’t they schedule school pageants at times when working parents can attend? And couldn’t he just call to reschedule his job interview earlier in the day or a day or two later? Assuming they want him so bad.

Although after watching any of this movie, all they’ll likely want is a shower and a scouring pad.