Extra-long "director's cut" of a movie review in today's Oregonian....
I love that Oscar-winning screenwriter Diablo Cody decided to follow up "Juno" with a horror-comedy that lovingly mashes up "Heathers," early Sam Raimi and "Buffy the Vampire Slayer." It's so much cooler than Halle Berry following her Oscar win with that money-grubbing demolition of Catwoman -- because unlike Berry, Cody clearly has a love of genre material.
And while "Jennifer's Body" doesn't always connect -- particularly when it tries to build horror-movie tension -- it's still an obvious labor of movie-geek love. It follows the supernaturally troubled relationship between a couple of high-school girls: bookish Needy (Amanda Seyfried) and maneating head cheerleader Jennifer (Megan Fox).
Needy has been Jennifer's friend since sandbox days. Possibly because of a sublimated crush, Needy blindly does Jennifer's bidding. One evening, this requires Needy to act as Jennifer's wingman at a performance by a bland (and possibly Devil-worshipping) indie band led by Adam Brody.
There's a fire in the venue. Jennifer disappears in the band's van. When she re-appears, she's covered in blood and has somehow been magically transformed into a bile-spewing demon succubus. And, as in "Heathers," social murder becomes literal murder: Jennifer continues attending classes in her usual bitchy human guise -- only now with occasional breaks to seduce and quite literally eat boys from various social castes.
"I knew what I had to do to be strong," says Jennifer, trying to explain to Needy the relationship between her new supernatural powers and her taste for man-flesh. Maybe this is Cody's moral: Destroying others to make yourself superficially beautiful and popular is a bad thing to do. Or maybe there's some more-elaborate postfeminist statement going on here that I can't quite parse. Either way: demonic cannibalism? Wrong.
Anyway. Needy's loyalties (and hormones) are put to the test. There's also some mild satire of the community's response to tragedy and the warped priorities of teenagers and indie musicians -- though nothing registers at a "Heathers"-level Richter-scale reading. And it all unfolds at a measured pace.
Anyone who joined the backlash against Cody's try-too-hard dialogue from "Juno" (a movie that I thought connected despite lines like "Honest to blog?") will find much ammunition here. Needy and Jennifer have nicknamed each other "Vagisil" and "Monistat"; Jennifer calls uses "salty" and "Jell-O" as adjectives to describe human beings; Amy Sedaris briefly turns up as Needy's mom and declares herself a "hard-ass, Ford-tough mama bear" before disappearing from the story entirely; J.K Simmons turns up with a wig and a hook and a funny way of saying "pecan sandies"; and when one character tells another to leave the room, she does so by saying, "Move on, dot org!"
But if director Karyn Kusama ("Girlfight," "Aeon Flux") nails anything, it's this: She successfully directs her actors to say those lines with nary a whiff of self-consciousness, making most of the dialogue as throwaway-amusing as Cody intended. Performances are for the most part very strong in "Jennifer's Body," especially Seyfried's and even Megan Fox's -- this despite the latter starlet's fame being rooted thus far in her ability to lean over motorcycles and burn bridges in interviews.
Fox's talent may end up being a bit like Keanu Reeves' talent, where's it's only evident with certain directors who know how to use the actor. But Kusama uses Fox well, making the most of the "Transformers" star's gift for radiating blank-eyed arrogance. It's not a performance that suggests a lot of range -- Jennifer is a narcissistic user at the start of the movie, and she's a narcissistic user with fangs and an "X-Men" healing factor by the end -- but it's a performance that's memorable, fun to watch, and maybe even a little iconic. Jennifer reminded me of one of those women in Daisy Dukes lounging on a sofa in a chat-line commercial -- only instead of "having the best time," she's casually munching on a human femur.
That said, "Jennifer's Body" does fall a bit flat at times. I think it's because Kusama and Cody don't always have as much fun with the horror aspects of the story as they could. Jennifer seduces and devours a boy, nobody really investigates, and then it happens, rhythmically, again and again, without much variation or character growth. The only seductions to break the pattern are a lingering Sapphic moment between Needy and Jennifer and a clumsy/honest fumble between Needy and her super-supportive boyfriend (Johnny Simmons). These are also the most emotionally charged moments in the film.
There's also this: The film wears its desire to be "Buffy" and Raimi and "Heathers" as nakedly as Ms. Cody wears her tattoos -- particularly during the one-liner-packed climactic battle, which features both levitation and Hannah Montana references. Only the results here feel more self-conscious, less satirical, and less thrilling.
Cody's ambition is admirable: She used her Oscar clout to pay tribute to the dark, funny material that rocked her socks at the video store when she was younger. But "Jennifer's" essential lack of tension will probably keep it from making its way to the shelf alongside those cult classics.
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Grade: C-plus; 102 min.; rated R for sexuality, bloody violence, language and brief drug use.
'Jennifer's Body' (The Oregonian, Friday, Sept. 14, 2009)
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