The Good Girl Photos

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Cast

Jake Gyllenhaal
as Holden

John C. Reilly
as Phil

Tim Blake Nelson
as Bubba

Jennifer Aniston
as Justine

Zooey Deschanel
as Cheryl

Mike White
as Corny

Deborah Rush
as Gwen

John Carroll Lynch
as Jack

John Doe
as Mr. Worther

Roxanne Hart
as Mrs. Worther

Jacob Vargas

Michael Hyatt
as Floberta

Jacquie Barnbrook
as Heavyset Woman

Jonathan Shere
as Lester

Annie O'Donnell
as Haggard Woman

Alice Amter
as Big Haired Woman

Jean Rhodes
as Old Woman

Aimee Garcia
as Nurse

Lalo Guerrero
as Blackberry Vendor

Ken Rudulph
as Reporter

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News & Interviews for The Good Girl

Critic Reviews for The Good Girl

Audience Reviews for The Good Girl

• May 06, 2012

  well acted but this wasn't my type of film. aniston proves she is much more then a friends actress here.
  Brendan N Super Reviewer
• Dec 18, 2011

  First they made "Chuck and Buck" (2000). Two years later, screenwriter Mike White and director Miguel Arteta collaborated on "The Good Girl." The highly original and piercing "Chuck and Buck" is by far the better film, but "The Good Girl" has its charms, particularly a beautiful performance from Jake Gyllenhaal as a lonely, mentally unstable college student who calls himself Holden (after the protagonist in "Catcher in the Rye"). Jennifer Aniston, in her first and last interesting film role, plays the main character, a depressed, uneducated store clerk who has an extra-marital affair with Holden that goes awry. She is married to a brainless couch potato played by John C. Reilly. As you'd expect from this filmmaking team, there's much dark humor and deadpan comedy about small-town life. At times the spirit of Todd Solondz is channelled. But nothing really surprising or compelling is ever discovered about the characters, and the comedy grows thin after a half-hour. The actors walk around in a catatonic stupor, going way over the top to dramatize their characters' stagnation and mindlessness. I'm not sure why it's interesting to depict everyone in the heartland as retarded. It certainly bears no relationship to the reality of the heartland, where there is a lot more diversity than that. After a while, it just seemed like easy jokes perpetrated by artists who weren't really challenging themselves. You could think of "Good Girl" as the last mumble-core movie. I'm quite glad that this sub-genre is pretty much dead.
  William D Super Reviewer
• Apr 28, 2011

  I didn't like it. It was so derivative yet miserable, so cheerless yet faux-introspective. Sometimes there were these departures into fantasy and I didn't know what to think of them.
  Jennifer X Super Reviewer
• Mar 19, 2011

  A bored Texas housewife begins an affair with a troubled younger man, who works with her at the Retail Rodeo. The supporting characters in this film are truly excellent. Zooey Deschanel and Tim Blake Nelson are fantastic as the main couple's co-workers, Deschanel caking makeup on her face and slipping in snarky comments over the Retail Rodeo's P.A. and Nelson's characteristic commitment to the playing the hick fool. I even found Jennifer Aniston's performance strong, eschewing her Rachel from <i>Friends</i> schtick and adopting a confined gait. The script also succeeded on many levels. The film was able to render the claustrophobic nature of these characters and this place so much so that I almost found myself rooting for Gyllenhaal's unstable character. On a certain level, the script almost convinced me that he had a point. However, the ending is rather predictable, and as the plot thinned, so did my interest. And Justine's penultimate choice makes her a highly "unfeminist" character, one to whom we may be able to relate but ultimately never want to cheer for.
  Jim H Super Reviewer

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