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Jersey Girl is an average, mildy entertaining romantic comedy. Ben Affleck's performance is just fine as both a slick record executive, and a sentimental single father. Jennifer Lopez is good as Affleck's wife. Her death is still emotional even though we all knew it was coming. Raquel Castro is remarkably unannoying as the daughter. Like many, I tend to find supposedly cute kids more annoying than cute. Raquel Castro manages to give a real performance even though some of her reactions are clearly forced. Even though I found the acting okay overall, there was one scene I just could not stand. Does there have to be scene in every movie with kids where they tell a parent "I hate you?" As Roger Ebert pointed out, Jersey Girl includes a parent rushing to a school play, and a slow clap, but neither are as bad a movie cliche as a kid screaming "I hate you" while a bad 80's ballad begins to play. That brings me to my next point about Jersey Girl. The songs just overtake the entire story. There's actually one point in the movie where a song is playing...the song stops...Affleck has an emotional moment with the kid...the same song starts over again. The dialogue gets in the way of the song. If Kevin Smith is such a great writer, then he needs to let his words explain the movie, not a group of bad songs. That being said, I did enjoy this movie overall. Affleck and George Carlin have some funny moments with and without the daughter. The two guys who are not Gertie's uncles are funny. I particularly enjoyed the "cameo" from Will Smith. I hesitate to call it a cameo even though he is only in one scene. In this one scene, The Fresh Prince sets Affleck straight and basically sets up the resolution of the movie. After seeing Jersey Girl, I tried to think of what this movie would have been without all the Bennifer hype. I think they would have marketed the movie completely differently, and it would have been downright shocking when J-Lo died and didn't appear again in the movie. Imagine the heads turning in the theater as people think "what, she's dead?" I'm sure this was Smith's intention when they started casting and shooting the movie. Seeing him on talk shows, you can see through his joking that he was upset about being forced to edit the movie based on the media blitz.
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