Jersey Girl Review

Jersey Girl

by Jeff Dawson |
Published on
Release Date:

18 Jun 2004

Running Time:

95 minutes

Certificate:

15

Original Title:

Jersey Girl

Tearing more than a few leaves out of the scripts marked Pretty Woman and Pretty In Pink, this is one of those fluffy aspirational films where a girl from the wrong side of the tracks sets out to bag herself an off-the-peg Prince Charming as an escape route from her miserable lot.

The Cinderella on this occasion is the strangely monikered Tobi (Gertz), a kindergarten teacher from Hackensack, Noo Joizey, who every night gazes across the Hudson at the golden parapets of Manhattan, the magical kingdom beyond the water. She wants to be "a city girl," she wants "to go to meetings" and, more importantly, she wants to marry a "suit". Poor Tobi. She reads contraband issues of Elle, ogles the fellas in the Armani ads and can't persuade her girlie chums to form an escape committee - they're quite happy dating truckers and wearing crap clothes from K-Mart - so she ventures under the wire on her own to find "The kinda guy who can remember your name and plans special things for you to do," in this case "millionaire" print rep Dylan McDermott.

And that, essentially, is it - in transatlantic terms, the animation of an Essex girl joke stretched beyond breaking point as the initially heartless yuppie is pursued by a gal who, quite incredulously, has never been to the city before ("These potatoes are real?"). Of course she soon gets homesick once she's mastered the art of drinking beer from a glass - "Jersey feels so far away" - and the man at C&A is ultimately forced to choose between his fish-out-of-water catch and his swank job (though why he can't have both is anyone's guess), but what makes the whole thing even more nauseating is the theory peddled here that women can't possibly get by in this big ole' world without a bloke with a big wad.

Lame Cinderella-style rom-com for the New York suburbs

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