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Cert:

Cat.no: 23840 DVD

Running time: 89 minutes

Year: 2002

Pressing: 2003

Region(s): 2, PAL

Chapters: 28 plus extras

Sound: Dolby Digital 5.1

Languages: English

Subtitles: English for the hearing impaired

Widescreen: 1.85:1

16:9-Enhanced: Yes

Macrovision: Yes

Disc Format: DVD 9

Price: £17.99

Extras: Deleted Scenes, Alternate Ending Montage, Gag Reel, Two Audio Commentaries

---

Director:

Miguel Arteta (Chuck & Buck, The Good Girl, Livin Thing, Star Maps, TV: Homicide: Life on the Street, Pasadena, Six Feet Under)

Producer:

Matthew Greenfield

Screenplay:

Mike White

Music :

Andrew Gross

Cast :

Justine Last: Jennifer Aniston
Cheryl: Zooey Deschanel
Holden Worther: Jake Gyllenhaal
Jack Field: John Carroll Lynch
Bubba: Tim Blake Nelson
Phil Last: John C Reilly
Gwen Jackson: Deborah Rush
Corny: Mike White

"After living in the dark for so long, a glimpse of the light can make you giddy. Strange thoughts come into your head and you better think them. Has a special fate been calling you and you not listening? Is there a secret message right in front of you and you're not reading it? Is this your last, best chance? Are you gonna take it? Or are you going to the grave with unlived lives in your veins?"

The Good Girl is a drama that makes you wonder whether you've fulfilled everything you want to in life. Hardly anyone will feel that they have and they'll have missed opportunities in the past that need to be caught up on, however impossible they may seem.

Jennifer Aniston takes the role as put-upon housewife in the deep south and supermarket checkout girl Justine Last, trying to decide whether she should take what life has dealt her as her lot or if she should strive for more, but at what cost?

At home she has pot-smoking husband Phil (John C Reilly) and, frequently visiting, his layabout brother Bubba (Tim Blake Nelson). At work it's an equally dull existence until she spots new cashier Holden Worther (Jake Gyllenhaal) and sees an attraction in him which proves to be returned.

It's a love that can never be and which gets in the way of the rest of life, such as when she's meant to be seeing colleague Gwen (Deborah Rush) at the hospital after she's taken in with a stomach ache, but is spending her time with Holden. Also, she wants to get pregnant, but fears her husband's sperm count is low.

As for the end result of the film it doesn't take a genius to predict but watching it is all about seeing how things get there. It's a brilliant piece of work that I wouldn't want to spoil by detailing too much but if you like a well-made drama then you won't be disappointed.

The cast is superb and makes the job of acting seem so effortless. There's great lines from Zooey Deschanel as bored shop assistant Cheryl, such as describing a skin cleanser to a potential customer as making her skin so slick "anything will roll right off it such as water, lemon juice or urine..." This came after describing, over the store tannoy system, a drain cleaner on special offer as "Ladies, stick something new and clean up your dirty, filthy pipes."

And one final thing - at no point do you think "It's Rachel from Friends!" Jennifer Aniston has come of age. And, for the pervs out there, she does go topless too.

The film is presented in anamorphic 1.85:1 widescreen and suffers from poor encoding during fast motion which makes things appear 'sticky'. This may be due to the slightly grainy way in which it was filmed but the end result isn't the best it could be.

The soundtrack is in Dolby Digital 5.1 and with that I can find no fault, but it never uses the soundstage to any great degree so you're not missing out if you only have a surround sound setup.

The extras are very thin on the ground:

• Deleted Scenes (9 mins): 9 scenes, all with optional director's commentary. Given that it's a short film some of these should definitely have been put back in to flesh it out a little without the expense of losing the tightness of the film. All the clips are in letterboxed 1.85:1 and surround sound, as are the rest of the extras.

• Alternate Ending Montage (30 seconds): Not massively different and took longer to write about than to watch.

• Gag Reel (2½ mins): The cast get things wrong and crack up in front of the camera.

• Audio commentaries: Two of them - one from director Miguel Arteta and writer/actor Mike White, the second from Jennifer Aniston, the latter not covering all the scenes in the film and only lasting 14 minutes.

The disc is also inflicted with a few piss-annoying trailers that you're forced to sit through the second the disc boots up as if it was a rental title. However, at least with this disc you can fast-forward through them.

The film contains 28 chapters, subtitles are available in English and the main menu is animated and scored with a looped piece of music from the film.

FILM CONTENT PICTURE QUALITY SOUND QUALITY EXTRAS
OVERALL

Review copyright © Dominic Robinson, 2003.

DVDs reviewed by the editor are watched on a Panasonic TXW32R4 32" widescreen TV connected to either a Creative Dxr2 DVD-ROM player or Microsoft Xbox and played through a Sony STR-DB930 amplifier.

PC games reviewed by the editor are on: