It's kind of sad when you think about how good this movie could have been. But the movie it was turned into didn't take advantage of the promising concept in any way for even a second. At an hour and 42 minutes, it somehow felt 30 minutes long. I guess that says something remotely positive, considering it's incredibly boring as well as bad. They bring on the demonic nastiness really early on and not a whole lot happens. You know the short plot synopsis, you know exactly what's going to happen. Hell, any ambiguity about the ending is spoiled by the opening scene.Character development? Forget about it. No one was going to this movie for the characters anyway. Maybe some came to hear the words of "Juno" writer Diablo Cody, but the only ones I can imagine liking it in any way are the ones who came to look at Megan Fox for two hours. She looks hot, but she doesn't get much help from the script that thinks sexiness is walking in slow-mo down the hall of a high school in tight clothing. Not that the movie would have been much better with a good script - Megan Fox absolutely cannot act. The whole time she has a 'James Franco-at-the-Oscars' kind of expressionless boredom. Amanda Seyfried, while an actual actress, can't do much to salvage the crappy material she's given. Her character's name is Needy, which should tell you just how subtle this movie is. We know she's the ugly girl because she's wearing glasses and has frizzy hair. Adam Brody, as the indie rocker who sacrifices the titular body to Satan, is the only one who can manage to put some life into things. He's the only one who looks like he's having fun, but unfortunately he isn't in much of the film.
I'm a person who really enjoyed "Juno," in spite of its hipster identity. But Diablo Cody might have peaked there, because "Jennifer's Body" sounds like it was written by a teenage shut-in trying to imitate her style. Forget about the way the characters talk, no one acts like a normal human would. There was hardly a moment while watching that I didn't have multiple questions running through my head wondering "why did she do that?" and "who would react like that?" The dialogue isn't as slang heavy as "Juno" but rather quirky and synthetically hip. Slang heavy or no, the synthetic hip worked in "Juno" - it does not work here. What's hilarious is the hipster identity is countered with a very commercial setting as every bedroom is covered in poster's of actual, famous modern alternative bands. The soundtrack, while largely indie in style, is completely out of tone with the rest of the movie. But then, the movie never quite makes up its mind what it wants to be. A horror-comedy? A cheesy indulgence? A girl-on-girl guilty pleasure? A tongue-in-cheek comment on high school sexuality? At its core it seems to want to be a horror movie before anything else, but I've seen scarier movies on Lifetime around Halloween. It can't even handle horror, as I found out at its utterly ridiculous ending. It's like they realized they spoiled the real ending of the movie and decided to tack on a bizarre plot twist that would make any horror fan recoil with stunned laughter.
I watch so many movies it would be exhausting to write reviews of all of them, but I haven't seen a movie that elicited such a completely negative reaction from me since "Crash." Not that I completely loathed that one; I mainly took issue with the critics fawning over it like it actually said something new and smart about race relations. But as for "Jennifer's Body," I truly did hate it. It was two hours poorly spent and I would not recommend it to a soul, even if your intentions are shallow. If all you want from this movie is Megan Fox, I feel I should point out that the R rating is definitely not for nudity.
My grade: F
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