Jersey Girl: Kevin Smith loses the edge

Let's run down the checklist of necessities for your typical Kevin Smith movie:

Profanity: check
Innumerable references to sex or sex-related acts: check
Glorification of the minimum-wage existence: check
New Jersey: check
Ben Affleck: check
7-year-olds: huh?

As far as any person with reasonable standards for decency is concerned (and if you're name isn't Howard Stern, this means you), no 7-year-old should be let within a twenty-mile radius of a Kevin Smith film, or possibly even within the state of New Jersey itself; no 7-year-old should be allowed to watch a trailer for a Kevin Smith film; in fact, no 7-year-old should have the slightest conception of the man's existence. And certainly, no 7-year-old should actually be in one of his movies.

But not only is a 7-year-old in Jersey Girl, Smith's first foray outside the "Jersey Trilogy," she's the star. And there's only one word in the English language sufficient to describe this development: no.

This is a movie marketed to adults but with a plot and characters that seem geared towards pre-teens. But before you allow your 10-year-old into Jersey Girl, plug their ears. Smith doesn't just need to scrub his mouth out with soap; he should scour every last film reel with paint-stripper. What Smith, the director and screenwriter, fails to recognize about Jersey Girl is that it is not, in fact, part of his (mostly) acclaimed "Jersey Trilogy," and that some concessions must be made. He imbues the film with the same lewd humor and coarse language that elicits raucous laughter from viewers watching Clerks and Chasing Amy, but he gives the crude lines to elementary-school children in the film's opening sequence. And from the mouths of the babes, this brand of humor is much less funny. In fact, you feel vaguely dirty watching it. Stir in bland characters and sickly dialogue, and you've got the die-hard legions of Kevin Smith fans wondering what exactly happened to this script on the way from his mind to Miramax?

Jersey Girl is the story of Ollie Trinke (Affleck), the youngest publicist in New York City and rivaling Colin Farrell from Phone Booth as the most obnoxious. Gertrude Steiney (Jennifer Lopez) seems to like him, at least enough to marry him and die tragically giving birth to his child (her name's Gertrude—it's amazing she lasted past the opening credits). Sadly, offing J.Lo is the single most brilliant plot device in the entire movie, and that comes a mere ten minutes in. After Ollie and his daugher, Gertie (Raquel Castro) move back in with Ollie's crotchety father (George Carlin) in New Jersey, the rest of Jersey Girl is the done-to-death tale of a workaholic finding new meaning in his life and family away from the fast life of the big city (The Family Man, anyone?).

But few of Smith's films have been heavy on plot—Clerks was about apathetic Americans loitering around convenience store, and Mallrats, the same, except in a shopping mall. What sets Smith apart as a filmmaker is his ability to capture brilliant character sketches that illuminate the everyman in all of us. We're all a little Randal, the world's worst employee from Clerks, part Holden, the lover who wants only what he can't have from Chasing Amy, and even a bit of Bethany, the spiritually lost cynic from Dogma. But, good Lord, I hope none of us is the grating Ollie, or the cloying Gertie, or Ollie's simpering love interest, Maya (Liv Tyler).

Maya, a video store clerk, enters the game by badgering and practically blackmailing Ollie into being a part of her graduate thesis on—in case we forgot this was a Smith film—men's pornography fixation. She offers him a "mercy jump" when she learns that he hasn't had sex since his wife died, and from then on is a fixture is his surrogate, New Jersey family.

These characters lack the realistic grit of Smith's other creations and are little more than typical Hollywood caricatures. Interactions between Ollie and Gertie are nauseatingly saccharine. Ollie seems to lose the ability to talk in first person whenever he's around his daughter. It's always, "Daddy loved his old job" or "Daddy loves the city!" The worse exception is when he loses his temper, screaming, "I hate you even more, you little [expletive not to be used in front of 7-year-olds]!" The only superlative character is the always-worthwhile Carlin, who, by the simple expedient of toning down his language whenever Gertie is onscreen, is unfailingly comedic in both his delivery and expression.

Though Kevin Smith supposedly put the "Jersey Trilogy" to rest with 2001's unwelcome Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back, everything, from the setting to the language to the Matt Damon and Jason Lee cameos in Jersey Girl testifies to the fact that he's not yet ready to gracefully cut the ties. Kevin, some advice: bury you past, and while you're at it, cremate this garbage as well.

Jersey Girl is rated PG-13 for language and sexual content including frank dialogue.