Cast: Megan Fox, Amanda Seyfried, Johnny Simons, Adam Brody; Director: Karyn Kusama; Producers: Daniel Dubiecki, Mason Novick, Jason Retiman; Screenwriter: Diablo Cody; Music: Stephen Barton, Theodore Shapiro; Editor: Plummy Tucker; Genre: Horror/ Thriller; Cinematography: M. David Mullen; Distributor: Twentieth Century-Fox Film Corporation; Location: USA; Running Time: 102 min.;Technical Assessment: 2.5
Moral Assessment: 2
CINEMA Rating: For mature viewers 18 and above
Jennifer Check (Megan Fox) is the high school teen queen over whom all the boys drool and whom all the girls envy. Nerdy-looking Needy Lesnick (Amanda Seyfried) is Jennifer’s best buddy from childhood, and the two seem to need each other to prove to the rest that: Jennifer is not really that friendless, and Needy somehow amounts to something with no less than the school queen as her friend. One night, Jennifer drags Needy to a “club” which turns out to be a cheap local bar where a rock band is performing. The bar catches fire. Ever the reckless daredevil, Jennifer defies Needy’s common sense and ends up in the rock band’s van roaring off to an unknown destination in the middle of the night. Everybody gives Jennifer up for good and then she comes back with an enormous appetite for male teen flesh, literally. Needy is convinced an evil spirit has inhabited Jennifer’s body, but nobody believes her.
Is Jennifer’s Body a horror, a comedy or a teen romance flick? It’s too predictable to be horrible, too horrible to be funny, and too laughable to be romantic. So it defies classification, not because it is creating a new and exceptionally unique one, but because it fails to establish its own identity. It’s not the movie’s fault, of course, but rather the work of a confused duo--director Karyn Kusama and writer Diablo Cody who seem to be treading on grounds they are unfamiliar with. This is unacceptable—if not downright unforgiveable—in film making. Even if they were just operating a horror booth in an amusement park, they should know which buttons to press at the right moment in order to scare the riders breathless. Give the customers their money’s worth, y‘know? A word about the actors: the boys are there not as persons but as props, dumb studs whose lust soon turns them into steaks for Jennifer. The girls? Seyfried is the one who saves the day—she can act, and let’s hope more challenging roles help her mature into seasoned Oscar material in due time. Perhaps Fox is the reason Jennifer’s Body as a horror movie fails to really grip the audience’s attention. She’s just too much of a Jolie copycat to convince us she means business when she reveals her fangs.
The moral of the story? Go ahead, boys, be suckers for sexy bods and be ready to be eaten up alive (but not necessarily in bed), ha ha! Girls, if you cannot as yet find boyfriends with intelligence to match your own, wait; it’s better to be boyless than to be with someone who thinks you’re being silly when you’re being dead serious. Unless you want to be widowed before you’re wedded.
