Grade: C-

Verdict: Aniston's good, but the movie isn't.

Details: Starring Jennifer Aniston and Jake Gyllenhaal. Directed by Miguel Arteta. Rated R for sexuality and language. One hour, 33 minutes. Limited release

See it: Showtimes available Friday. The Good Girl

Rate it: Write your own review

Review: It's a Kmart life for Justine (Jennifer Aniston), a checkout clerk at the Retail Rodeo and the protagonist of "The Good Girl," a low-budget independent film that's counting a lot on her name to sell it. She's worth buying; the movie is not.

It's probably no coincidence that one of the daily specials at the Retail Rodeo, the main store in a blip of a Texas town, is "liquid drain killer." Justine is being drained and killed by her life. She's 30 years old and she spends her days ringing up pantyhose pand eye shadow. She spends her nights with her husband, Phil (John C. Reilly), an amiable painter/doper who plops himself in front of the TV, smoking weed with his partner and fellow stoner Bubba (Tim Blake Nelson). It's hardly surprising she wants "to run or scream or cry." But she does nothing, except wonder if there are others out there like her with enough courage to "plan their escape."

It may not be escape she sees when she locks eyes with the new cashier, Holden (Jake Gyllenhaal), a moodily intense 20-year-old who still lives with his parents but believes there's poetry in him. His "slave name," he says, is Tom, but he chose Holden in honor of "The Catcher in the Rye," the book of choice among many moodily intense 20-year-olds, whether they live with their parents or not.

The pair start out sharing lunch and confidences about how no one "gets" them. Before long, they're lovers — though it's not what you'd call a grand romance. A typical tryst takes place in front of the Chuck E. Cheese; from there, they go to the local no-tell motel.

Will they be discovered? Will she turn from good girl to bad girl permanently? In one of the film's better scenes, Justine launches into a long monologue, explaining why she doesn't want to continue the relationship, with all the guilt and potential hurt it's caused. He listens intently, then says, "Well, can't we go to the motel?"

"The Good Girl" is already being touted as the movie in which Aniston finally sheds her Rachel character from "Friends." Frankly, this dismisses her work in films such as "Picture Perfect" and "The Object of My Affection," which weren't Rachel retreads and showcased her unique gift for romantic comedy.

Aniston's certainly good here. Her hair is pulled back in a nondescript ponytail, her clothes are drab and her body language telegraphs disappointment. (Jessica Lange is another bona fide beauty who pulled off the same difficult trick in "Cousin Bette.")

The rest of the cast ranges from serviceable (Gyllenhaal) to solid (Reilly). Best of all is Nelson ("O Brother, Where Art Thou?"), who knows exactly what a doper's slouch looks like and what a ferrety little redneck sounds like. However, the script and the direction aren't worth these actors' time or talent. Director Miguel Arteta and writer Mike White are probably best-known for the eccentric comedy "Chuck & Buck." You hang with their new movie for a while, hoping it will pull off the balance of deadpan comedy and slightly poignant soap opera it intends. But these guys apparently studied Terrence Malick's "Badlands" and Jonathan Demme's "Melvin and Howard"; "The Good Girl" apes their ruralized, affectless tone, and Aniston's monologues are a blatant rip-off of Sissy Spacek's in "Badlands."

But unlike the other movies, this one is suffused with a snotty condescension. The filmmakers are playing to the Big Boys in New York and L.A. To that end, they mock the kind of folks they don't understand, ones they figure the power-lunchers don't care to understand, either. They want the picture to be goofy in some incredibly smart and original way. All they manage is the sort of thing that could elicit a few private-screening-room snickers.

Aniston shouldn't take the fall for this, and here's hoping she gets some kudos, regardless of what people think about the rest of the picture. "The Good Girl" is a small independent movie that thinks it's a better small independent movie than it is.

— Eleanor Ringel Gillespie, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution