Good movie but grossly overrated

Fantastic!

This is one of the few movies I've ever seen where the whole audience broke into spontaneous, loud applause a third of the way in.

The acting in this movie is really good.

About a year and a half ago, around the same time that my love for movies turned into an addiction, I fell in love with IMDb and simultaneously decided that I was going to watch every Jake Gyllenhaal movie made (I happened to love him also). So when I sat down to watch this movie I really had no idea what to expect at all. What I learned over the next 90 minutes was the following: 1. Jake Gyllenhaal is not the focal point in this story 2. Jennifer Aniston can be a hell of a good actress when she applies herself and 3. Sometimes good monologue is not enough to save a film. The Good Girl has all the makings of a good movie. A solid cast, an experienced director, and a gifted writer. Yet something goes awfully wrong in the movie. It aims for a sort of nonchalant humor and while it is at times funny, more often than not it is painfully boring. You might end up walking away wondering 'Why, why did I see that?' Or you might find yourself appreciating the dry bits of humor and Aniston's character's reflections on her life, or lack there of. But the way that I like to examine the viewer value of a film is to ask yourself what you took away from it. And unfortunately, just like in the movie itself, nothing much changed from start to finish except an unsatisfied emptiness that had developed in the pit of my stomach by the time the credits had arrived to say, "It's Over."

This is an ill-fated attempt by Hollywood to make a "European" movie about a "Sartresque" issue, the (non)sense of life. It poses some interesting questions, but it is not dark enough, it cannot escape from the endemic US optimism that creeps up every now and then, even in such a film. Thanks god, such things are much better left to Europeans, Hollywood should go on doing what it is best at... Great entertainment!On a surprisingly positive note, Jennifer Aniston is great in her role, one would never have expected she can actually do a 'serious' role (no disrespect intended)... As one critic put it, 'Her performance is forceful and effective'. I could not agree more.

I am not a huge Jennifer Aniston fan, but she does great work in "The Good Girl." Without a word of dialogue, Ms. Aniston as Justine Last communicates the despair of a woman trapped in a boring marriage, employed at a dead-end job at a Walmart-like store in a nothing small town.For a time, Justine rebels against her life "Of Quiet Desperation" and starts a reckless affair with Jake Gyllenhaal's character Holden Worther.Justine is on the verge of escape,but in the end chooses stability over rebellion, because she is after all "The Good Girl."

I didn't really know anything about the concept for this independent film, I think it was the cast that was appealing to me. Basically young married Justine Last (Jennifer Aniston) has her her mundane life taking a turn when she begins a passionate and illicit affair with fellow discount store worker Holden Worther (Jake Gyllenhaal). She has said to herself she hates living with husband Phil (John C. Reilly) and his friend Bubba (Tim Blake Nelson) who constantly get high and drunk. Things get complicated when Justine has to deal with the death of co-worker and friend Gwen Jackson (American Pie: The Wedding's Deborah Rush), and Holden starts drinking and stealing because of the lack of seeing Justine. Also Bubba finds out about the affair and blackmails her into sex, and Justine gets pregnant, and with the reveal of a low sperm count, Phil has the truth told too. In the end, Holden commits suicide, and Justine accepts living her life with Phil and the new baby girl. Also starring Elf's Zooey Deschanel as Cheryl, Mike White as Corny and Volcano's John Carroll Lynch as Your Store Manager Jack Field. Aniston does surprisingly well in this quite serious role, and the supporting cast, especially Deschanel, all make the characters much more likable than possible the story, which is does seem more dramatic than comedic, but a good film nonetheless. Worth watching!