I finally saw this movie today.
We'll start with MF. Although she is sexy, I hated her in the Transformers Movies. I don't fault her solely for that. The scripted dialogue was bad, I have no respect for what the director brings from the actors in his movies, and her character literally served no purpose to the plot other than eye candy and obligitory romance subplot. The role got her noticed, but did start setting her up for people that like good acting to backlash.
I saw How To Lose Friends And Alienate People. She was in it. Her character was a rich, pampered, and sterotyped starlet. She didn't have much dialogue and as with Transformers they played up the eye candy aspect. They did make fun of the character archtype, but she again was stuck in a superficial role.
Now Jennifer's Body. I liked it. I went in a happy mood just wanting some entertainment. It is one of those horrer movies that poke fun of the genre. This type is indeed a subgenre to itself. It did well to that subgenre. The reason why is some dialogue and situations were well written. They also didn't beat a dead horror horse like vampires, government experiment gone wrong, or some dude with mommy issues gone slasher.
I liked that the lead characters were female. It is nice to change up from the grizzled guy that saves everybody but the horny or black characters that always seem to die first and often. It was also cool that they stayed feminine. In so many movies the chick that gets the job done (whatever the job may be) is always just mean towards the male characters and their roles in the film. Of course by the end of the movie she (usually for no reason) falls in love with the male lead. In this movie, sure Jennifer is mean but at least there is a reason; she is the popular girl in high school and a demon (usually the same thing in RL).
Overall I liked the movie compared to others in the horror class. They deviated from the standard formula enough to make it entertaining and not boring for me. Will it win an Oscar, no. But I had fun. They did have the archtypes but changed their situations enough to seem different.
The best acting came from Amanda Seyfried. I saw her in Mean Girls. She played a total ditz blonde and was funny. Here, I thought she was great and it was nice to see her show some range. I see her getting regular work with a wide range of roles in the future. They tried to nerd her up. She, to me seemed sweet in her nerdy garb. To see her go badarse was almost a shock and I credit her acting talent. She is earning my respect. The lesibian kiss she did was nice to watch, but unnecessary. Fun, but pointless to the plot. Maybe the producers wanted it to get the repressively horny males (like me) in the seats.
I agree with Bob on one point regarding the scripts dialogue. The actors are all playing teens. Some of the dialogue sounded like fully made up words and phrases the are not used in conversation or even blogging. Some of it sounded like the writer was hoping it would catch on and be used by others in blogs to validate her that somebody watched her movie. It did get annoying after a while.
Overall, I had fun.
Back to MF. In this movie, she did a good job. She showed more range in this. Don't get me wrong she was eye candied to death. But I think she actually had something to do beside serve Michael Bay's desire to have had sex with her before she turned 18. Based on this I think if she keeps taking acting lessons, learns/develops, and her agent gets her some roles that don't require her moneymaker; I will give her a shot to see if she is more than a hot chick in perpetual porn make up.
I am not a fan of hers. This is the first thing I have seen her in I liked. I hope she gets an indepth role for us to say "finally, I have a non-horny reason to watch her on screen." Maybe they could remake It's A Wonderful Life and let her play Donna Reed's part. If she can pull it off without shaking her moneymaker, great. If Mary Baily is handing out cash at her husband's savings and loan during depression era 1930s while wearing a corset french kissing one of the female tellers; she's done.
