Movie Review - Movies You Probably Won't See Anyway Edition - Jennifer's Body

Let me just say I didn't go out of my way to watch Jennifer's Body. I was mildly curious because, hey, it's got Megan Fox and it almost looked like it had something important to say about the dynamics of female friendships. So late last night after too much vodka and fast food, I decided to decompress and give this movie a chance.

So here's the good stuff: The production values show on screen. Everything is colorful, pretty and fun to watch. And most of the actors are pretty good too, which brings us to the bad... Giving Megan Fox dialogue written by Diablo Cody is like trying to teach a kitten to yodel. It might be cute, but ultimately you're just going to get poop and no one wants to hear yodeling anyway. Unless maybe they'd punctuated every "quirky" phrase with a distant inexplicable yodel. Either way, it wouldn't have taken me out of the movie any less.

It's bad enough that Diablo Cody's dialogue tries so hard to be original and before its time that it sounds like every internet forum member you've ever wanted to hunt down and punch in real life. But it's especially enraging to hear it erupt lifelessly from Megan Fox's beautiful-but-plastic mouth and flop to the ground with all the earnestness of a fake tit.

On top of that, every male character is written as if they would gladly walk into a room full of saws, angry clowns, winged blowtorches, and a naked Tracy Morgan just because a pretty girl takes them by the hand. I'll concede a majority of guys would do this, but not all.

All in all, I kept feeling like I'd seen this movie before. Then it dawned on me: This was Heathers with demonic possession tossed in and anything meaningful yanked out. Sure there's a tiny statement on predatory girls turning the table on boys, but it's so tacked on it feels about as earnest as the aforementioned fake tit. Joss Whedon's Buffy series tackled female empowerment in a high school setting *with* demons *and* quirky dialog much better. It's not that Jennifer's Body is horrible, it's just late to the party and all the good songs have been played.

On my rating scale, it gets a "meh."