Terror attends the opening of a movie called The Good Girl!!

Can Jennifer Aniston be taken seriously?

Will viewers accept her in a role so completely different from her portrayal of Rachel on TV's Friends?

And blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah!!!!

For several months preceding the opening of this clever movie, The Good Girl, all the focus has been on Aniston and her role. Is she good? She is very good. Okay?

And that's not the half of it.

The Good Girl, for starters, is written by Michael White. This is his third collaboration with director Miguel Arteta, who paired with White on Star Maps and Chuck & Buck. White has a delicate and very subversive approach to creating characters. Ambiguity is always present. He seems to know way more than he should about women, too.

The Good Girl is the story of Justine (Aniston), an ordinary woman with a dead-end job at the local Retail Rodeo, and a dead-end marriage to a sweet-natured house painter (John C. Reilly). Into her nothing life comes a dreamy wannabe novelist (Jake Gyllenhaal) and suddenly, our heroine feels alive and passionate again. For a while.

The problem she faces is having to choose: Wild new life with vaguely dangerous young boyfriend, or stale old life with boring but safe hubby? Our good girl makes some decidedly dodgy decisions.

Everyone in The Good Girl yearns for something more in life. Most of the characters are seeking a way to run away from the lives they have. It is, by the way, darkly funny, not to mention tragic and depressing.

The Good Girl has an almost perfect cast -- John C. Reilly, as Aniston's husband, Zooey Deschanel as Aniston's crazed co-worker, Tim Blake Nelson as a sidekick, and White himself as a big-C Christian security guard. The performances are uniformly good.

"If you conform," says director Miguel Arteta, "it's like a life sentence. But if you rebel, you don't have a place in society."

Six of one, and so forth. That's the story of The Good Girl.

(This film is rated AA)

More Movie Reviews