Plot Megan Fox stars as a cheerleader who's taken over by a demon and starts eating the local boys.
Review Splicing horror with comedy is not an easy thing to get right. For every Shaun Of The Dead, there’s a Lesbian Vampire Killers. Undaunted, Jennifer’s Body arrives with two names attached that guarantee interest, and they’re both female.
The first is Diablo Cody. Thanks to indie hit Juno, the stripper-turned-Oscar-winning screenwriter is now considered hipper than Mad Men, Bat For Lashes and the garden bar at the Chateau Marmont put together. Juno was spiky enough to not make it too jarring when Cody’s next script turned out to centre on a demon-possessed cheerleader.
The second is Megan Fox. She’s trodden this turf before, as a bitchy high-schooler in 2004’s Confessions Of A Teenage Drama Queen, but since becoming an A-lister she’s been stuck in bland, pretty-girl roles. If the frank, fresh-talking actress, who recently compared Michael Bay to Hitler, has been pining to be bad, here she gets her wish. As the owner of Jennifer’s bodacious body and the flirty, dirty villain of the piece, Fox purrs, “You give me such a wetty”, pukes up torrents of blue gunk and becomes a literal maneater, sinking her teeth into unfortunate jocks. Optimus Prime would be appalled.
Both ladies, who share a passion for tattoos and thrash-rock, clearly have a blast with the material. Cody hasn’t toned down her trademark smart-alecky slang-talk (or the pop-culture licks — the curse is put on Jennifer not by a gypsy, but an indie band desperate to be as big as Maroon 5), while Fox looks more at ease aiming her “smart-bombs” (breasts) at “salty morsels” (cute boys) than she ever did learning life lessons from sentient trucks. When she’s chewing on Cody’s words, it’s silly, campy fun, though there’s occasional over-quirk — “It’s freak-tarded!” is the new “Your eggo is preggo!”
A bigger problem lies with the scares. As Jennifer rampages and Needy (Amanda Seyfried) realises something’s taken control of her friend — it takes a while as, oddly, Jennifer’s personality doesn’t change much despite the fact her body has a new, satanic tenant — there’s a series of scenes which are supposed to be actually frightening. We know this because there’s spooky music on the soundtrack, but director Karyn Kusama (veteran of oestro-pics Aeon Flux and Girlfight) resolutely fails to deliver any tension. It doesn’t help that Jennifer’s jaws are stretched open with shoddy CGI, or that one death scene involves reaction shots from forest animals, or that the grue’s been toned down from Cody’s original script. One victim is described as looking like “lasagne with teeth” after falling for Jennifer’s siren call; some of that nastiness on screen would have given the film some real sting.
As is, we’ll have to make do with this well-meaning but muddled movie, where earnest stabs at real emotion rub uneasily against the generally snarky vibe. Jennifer’s Body has a cool score, Wikipedia gags and a handful of fun set-pieces, including a sex scene with supernatural interruptions and an ace punchline. It’s just not the biting high-school satire/bugfuck-crazy zombie film we were hoping for.
Verdict Fox is fun as a demonic harpy, but sadly the meeting of Hollywood’s two rock’n’roll queens is closer to safe studio product than slash-and-burn envelope-pusher.
The only thing that helped me justify the time I spent watching this movie was the twenty seconds of girl on girl action. The rest of it was truly terrible. It's so middle of the road, so bland and boring it almost made me scream. But then again I had a pretty good idea this would be the case. O only watched it because it had Megan Fox in it - as did a lot of other people I imagine. ... Read More
It was pretty enjoyable. The primary problem for me is that Diabolo Cody isn't nearly as sharp or funny as she's hailed to be. As with Juno, the reference-laden dialogue fell flat - not funny enough to pass as good comedy and not authentic enough to overcome its lack of bite. Every character still sounds like a late-twenties / early-thirties hipster making a vague attempt to sound ten years younger.
As a brainless horror comedy, i've seen a couple of hundred worse... Read More
I found this pretty enjoyable throughout, and FAR more entertaining than the vastly overrated Juno.
As a gorehound it's a shame the carnage was cut back on, but for a trashy night out you could do far worse. ... Read More
I found this film absolutely hilarious. I watched it back in September in San Fran and have seen it again the other week. It's randomly funny and I haven't seen such a quotable film as this all year! The best part for me was the make out scene between Megan and Amanda when a guy cried out 'this is better than Transformers'!
Megan and Amanda play off each other well, I agree that Amanda grounds the film emotionally. But I'm gonna have to say I found Megan hysterical. A tad weak in parts but o... Read More
I found this pretty enjoyable. Not as good as it could have been maybe and it seems it may have been toned down by the studio a bit to reach a wider audience. We know Cody likes her old-school horror but that might not have gone down too well with the suits and it's true it never really delivers any scares which I found suprprising. There is one scene where Needy sneaks around her house looking for an intruder which was nicely tense but other than that not much else.
On the plus side it... Read More
Following Juno many of us were eagerly anticipating Diablo Cody's next move (i know i was). Jennifer's Body is a mostly successful teen horror/comedy but its not without its flaws. Director Karyn Kusama fails to rack up any tension and the casting never quite works. Its nice to see that Cody knows her horror and has produced a well written script packed with plenty of laughs. Maybe next time her material will be in better hands. ... Read More
In a word....gash!
Only Seyfield stops it from being a complete stinker. On this evidence it's unbelievable to think this was written by an Oscar winner.
2/5 (but only just...)
... Read More
Not trashy enough.... We were promised Jennifer's Body.
Not trashy enough.... we were promised Jennifer's Body, we got to see a little bit of cleavage. The film wasn't gory enough or sexy enough to deliver. I must say though that seeing an posing Emo boy being eviserated was quite fun and most indy bands probably have sold their souls to satan.... how else do you account for their success. ... Read More
Fell asleep during this, megan fox can't act for toffee, there was no tension and the humour fell mostly flat! Good concept shoddily executed!! Megan fox is hot though!! I'll watch it again with the sound on mute next time ... Read More
A good old-fashioned slice of saturday night escapism with Seyfried providing a brilliant foil for Fox's hot, dirty raven-haired minx. Optimus would be outraged at this well-written, witty, saucy horror-com. ... Read More
Classic
Excellent
Good
Fair
Tragic
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