Jersey Girl

December 18, 2005 - Jennifer Lopez shows up for about the first 10 minutes of this 2004 movie. Then, she dies, probably because she realizes that the rest of it is going to suck.

My guess is that JLo played her role as a favor to her fiancé at the time, Ben Affleck. He plays Ollie Trinke, a Jersey guy who rose up from his humble beginnings to make it big as a PR guy in New York City. He meets Gertrude (JLo), they get married, they get pregnant, and then she dies while giving birth. Ollie is unprepared to be a widower and a new dad all at once. When Will Smith is late for an appearance, Ollie has a meltdown and gets canned.

So, back to Jersey he goes. Dad George Carlin gets Ollie a job with the Public Works department and teaches his son how to be a father. Next thing we know, little Gertie is seven years old and playing "I'll show you mine..." with a boy classmate.

Liv Tyler enters the picture as Maya, a grad student who works at the local video store. She catches Ollie buying porn and decides to use him as a subject for her research. Ollie reluctantly agrees, and the next thing you know, Maya is hanging out at the house, helping little Gertie prepare to do a scene from "Sweeny Todd." Yeah, I know.

Overall review: * I kind of want to give it another half a star, but I'll err on the side of caution and go with just one. The premise had potential, I think, but the movie spends too much time focusing on Ollie and his daughter. I wanted to see more of Maya trying to fit into things.

As noted above, this movie has quite a few "next thing you know" moments that leave you wondering what you missed. I was also troubled by the meeting of Ollie and Maya. We're led to believe that the meeting in the video store is their first. But later, Ollie admits that he's rented porn 3 or 4 times a week since his wife died. All that porn and he's just NOW meeting Maya? The town's not big enough for more than one video store.