Saturday, January 22, 2011

"Jennifer's Body"(2009)d/Karyn Kusama

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I guess some people out there dug Juno.I dunno.I saw the damned thing at a second run theater with my then-girlfriend for a buck and still felt like I got ripped for my money, pretty much.The things you do to get laid.It was written by this ex-stripper chick,Diablo Cody, who won an Oscar and twenty other awards for her skills on the movie, which ended up grossing some one hundred forty million dollars at the box office.Next on her to do list was to write and produce this movie, an allegedly dark comic horror showcase for the wet dream of teenaged American boys everywhere, Megan Fox.So the finished product is Fox-heavy fap-fodder with a limp and uninspired horror theme all packed with teen irony and written in some sort of hokey teen dorkspeak, decipherable only to the giggly pubescent sleepover crowd and probably Cody herself, and palatable only to teen boys who haven't discovered the joys of surfing free porn sites for days at a time.For anyone outside those miniscule target audiences,Body is like watching a feature-length episode of a spooky Disney show geared towards kids with frags simulated sex and lazy cgi gore thrown in for some reason.Amanda Seyfried, who you'll remember was Tom Cruise's little girl in War of the Worlds, has grown into quite a bug-eyed nerd, which works well in this production.KNB/MPC handled the effects, which range from hardly noticeable to pretty impressive in one or two instances.I picked it up the other day just for something new to watch, with precious little enthusiasm going on, and whattaya know, it lived down to my expectations.In Kusama/Cody's defense, pulling off female empowerment and adhering to time-tested horror conventions while recalling airs of Heathers(1988) at the same time is no easy juggling act,especially when your movie is named after a Hole tune on the Reeks of Kurt Cobain...errr,Live Through This album to begin with.I sat through it, just the same.After all these years, what's another hour and a half, right?
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Whiny hipster douchebags steeped in man-scara and guyliner? Yeah. Great.
Needy(Amanda Seyfried)has run the gamut from introverted dork with Peter Lorre eyes to violent mental patient stewing in solitary confinement.Through flashback, we see that Needy's been best friends with Jennifer(Megan Fox), a popular flag squad knockout, since they were children.The vapid brunette harlot drags her wallflower pal out to a show at a nearby dive to see Low Shoulder, an indie douchebag band, when the place mysteriously catches fire, causing several patrons to eat flaming deathballs.In the melee, Jennifer ends up in the band's van, later turning up at Needy's place in the middle of the night, splattered in blood and spraying black spiky vomit out of her yap all over the kitchen floor.Of course, the next day at school, Jennifer slags her friend's concern off, acting as though nothing happened. Meanwhile the burg is overwhelmed by the numerous townspeople eating it in the fire, and Jennifer beguiles the school's meathead football captain, who she eviscerates in the forest, where the woodland creatures feast on his lifeless leftovers. Thanks to Jackanory-esque rumors of bravery during the fire, Low Shoulder gains popularity locally, offering to play a charity gig during the spring formal.A month later we find Jennifer looking like scrambled eggs until she decides to feast on the school emo, Colin, her best pal Needy receiving a blood curdling premonition as her boyfriend Chip pops her coochie with a wrapper on his fapper.
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I dug this particular sequence pretty heavily, I cannot tell a lie.
Jennifer then fills in her girlfriend on the events that transpired the night of the fire.The band, in a ploy to sell their souls to Ol' Scratch in return for fame and riches in the music industry, sacrificed Jennifer in the woods, believing she was the virgin necessary for the half-baked ritual...
...of course, Jennifer hadn't been one of those since Radiohead first decided to be pretentious, so instead of snuffing it at the end of a knife blade, she became a succubus, sneaking off and eating the foreign exchange student, Ahmet, like so much curry.Makes perfect sense to me.After researching the school library's throrough occult section(!), Needy tells Chip the whole story, which he naturally believes zero of, being more interested in adding to their four minutes of interrupted coitus.She dumps him on the eve of the formal, to protect him from her flesh-crazed friend, but when he goes stag hoping to run into Needy there, he finds himself seduced by she of the stumpy toe-thumb clan.By the time Needy makes the scene,she finds her bff chowing down on her beau's neck in the swimming pool.Jennifer escapes,but Chip, mortally wounded, cashes his chips in on the spot.Needy breaks into Jennifer's room with a tile cutter, getting bitten in the process but finally dispatching her once and for all.J's mom comes in to find her daughter dead with Needy holding a bloody knife on top of her, sealing her fate within the judicial system.Back in solitary, Needy discovers that when Jennifer bit her, she transferred some of her dark power to Four Eyes.Makes perfect sense to me.She breaks out, hitching a ride(from Lance Henriksen, of all people!)to a Low Shoulder show, where she pays the girly boys back for their earlier treachery, one hundred fold.Cue titles.
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Daaaamn, she drank your bee eff's throat sauce, bitch! So whussup!
On a positive note, if your old lady has a heart filled with contempt and hatred for all things horror, this might be the movie one you can sneak onto her screening schedule with little or no silver-tonguedness necessary.Of course, if you have to tiptoe through the tulips with the gal concerning something as trivial as movies, you're in big fucking trouble before you're even outta the gate, in my estimation.Then again, being a spineless jellyfish trumps being a lonely son of a bitch every single time, so what the Hell do I know, right? However you wanna chew it, the taste remains the same, unfortunately, and I can't see tonight's review making the top ten lists of anybody who counts.Or anyone that doesn't, even.Or top hundred, really.One wop.
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"You ever see "Pirahna Part 2:The Spawning", little girl?"
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2 comments:

Ty said...

Nice review. will keep avoiding the movie.

beedubelhue said...

Thanks Ty!



-Wop

 
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