Everyone’s talking about the new R-rated trailer for Jennifer’s Body, a horror comedy starring Megan Fox as a possessed cheerleader. My first impression was that it seems too much like last year’s Teeth, only with less interesting subtext. Alison Willmore of The Independent Eye instead finds the movie reminiscent of 2000’s Ginger Snaps, though she doesn’t think that’s a bad thing. Either way, coming from screenwriter Diablo Cody, Jennifer’s Body doesn’t appear original in any way except for its forced, writerly dialogue (”You need a mani bad. You should find a Chinese chick to buff your situation.”). And interestingly (coincidentally?) enough, her Oscar-winning movie, Juno, just so happens to feature actress Emily Perkins, costar of the Ginger Snaps trilogy.
Originality aside (it’s also being likened to Heathers and Species), Jennifer’s Body is being celebrated as low culture, criticized for being worse than low culture and otherwise dividing the bloggers up as only Cody’s feature follow-up to Juno could. Meanwhile, the truly important people (i.e. the teen boys looking at blogs) probably won’t care about what’s a good screenplay or what films this may have ripped off, because they’re probably only paying attention to all the teased Megan Fox nudity (including plenty of footage of that “topless” scene we saw “leaked” photos of last year).
By the way, my second impression of the trailer was that it’s cool they used a Runaways song so that this Bloggery can be linked to last Friday’s posting, in a way. Shows how bored I was with the plot/dialogue/visuals. Also, because you probably won’t see her acknowledged on most posts about this movie, Jennifer’s Body is directed by Karyn Kusama, of Girlfight and Æon Flux.
Now, on to the film blog reactions, after the jump:
