Jennifer Aniston's drama 'The Good Girl' (2002) was great but has been totally forgotten

The film was her attempt to avoid being entirely defined by Friends and Office Space, and it's worth your time. It was written by Mike White, who also wrote School of Rock and The White Lotus.

She plays a retail worker in a tiny town in Texas, married to a man she doesn't like and depressed in life. Her husband, played by John C. Reilly, gives a good performance as a man who is not a jerk, just a person uninterested in anything beyond getting through the day and smoking a little pot.

Aniston's character meets a new employee at the Retail Rodeo, a young guy played by Jake Gyllenhaal who loves The Catcher In the Rye and has renamed himself Holden.

You can probably predict some of what happens next, but the movie does such a perfect job of fleshing out the characters and avoiding them becoming stereotypes. Gyllenhaal's character in particular seems like a trope at first, but you get interested in him after a little while. And Aniston is just great - embodies someone who hasn't been mistreated by anyone in particular but by life as a whole. Two very solid performances.

Overall the film is a great example of the genre of following lives of quiet desperation, the drudgery of small-town life. It's a very funny satire at times too (Zooey Deschanel, without bangs and hard to recognize, has a small role that's pretty hilarious).

But I've never heard the movie talked about, even as Aniston has established herself as a huge comedy star and Reilly/Gyllenhaal/Deschanel have continued their success. You can't even find it on any streaming platform. I strongly recommend a watch if you want to see Aniston in a very different role than her usual work.

Submitted March 27, 2022 at 04:10AM by Ganesha811 https://ift.tt/kRdf2Z4