Bad news: my friend Kelsey felt the need to point out to me that Megan Fox has toe thumbs. It was all I could see. There was a flash of one of them somewhere in the movie and honestly, that was the point at which I was most scared. They freak me.Guys must not know this, or else how would she have a career? They are so freakish. It's like on 30 Rock- that's a deal breaker ladies (men). Serious. It's gross. Anyways, after the jump is the Observer article so you know my opinion on the movie, not just her toe thumbs.
Jennifer's Body: Not Your High School's Mean Girl
By: Courtney Eckerle
What’s a girl to do when her best friend
turns into a boy-eating demon? Kick that
demonic succubus back to hell of course.
Everyone knows how hellish teenage
girls can be, but “Jennifer’s Body” takes
it to a whole new level.
Megan Fox plays Jennifer, the typical
popular mean girl turned not-so-typical
cannibalistic she-demon from hell.
Amanda Seyfried, of “Mamma Mia”
fame, stars as Jennifer’s less than socially
adept best friend, Needy. They live in a
nowhere town ironically named “Devil’s
Kettle,” where boys start disappearing
one by one after a mysterious fire has
Jennifer running off with an indie band
that worships the devil.
While writer Diablo Cody’s sophomore
attempt doesn’t lose any of the kick and
pop culture references that made “Juno”
a hit, there are, however, several eye-roll
inducing phrases that are obviously trying
to mold the “teenage” group into
witty pun machines. For instance,
Jennifer changes the word jealous to
“jello,” and walks around saying goodlooking
people are “salty,” even before
she wants to eat them. However, there
are several redeeming clever culture
slams like when a girl yells, “of course
it’s true, it’s on their Wikipedia!”
The soundtrack also contains the same
kind of “I’m just here ironically” music
that made the “Juno” soundtrack such a
huge success, featuring acts like Little
Boots and Cute Is What We Aim For.
Fox is definitely taking on a bigger acting
role than in the “Transformers”
movies that made her famous, although
it’s not exactly difficult since that role
seemly consisted of finding every possible
way to rub her chest up against the hood
of a car.
The film opened at No. 5 in the U.S.
box office on Friday, only pulling in $2.7
million in ticket sales, which shows that
despite Fox’s sex appeal, she still doesn’t
possess the chops to successfully open a
movie. Audiences do however, have to
give her credit for signing on to do a
movie where she is devouring the very
demographic that makes her successful,
and scenes of her vomiting black goo and
covered in blood and guts are far more
frequent than ones without.
Audiences also end up feeling sorry for
the sadistic (both before and after her
transformation) Jennifer when they see
how she dies to the tune of “867-5309
(Jenny)” by Tommy Tutone, a fate too
terrible to wish on anyone.
While Fox is strapped into her lessthan-
a-stretch temptress role, pretty girl
Seyfried shines as a plain girl. Normally
it is enough to slap some glasses on an
actress and have her wear loose, “nerdy”
clothing to make her the Plain Jane character,
but it is really Seyfried’s range that
drives home her spin on the ‘girl lower in
the pecking order finding her strength
and standing up to the queen bee’ scenario.
Except in this case the queen bee
has fangs and a taste for human flesh, so
naturally, our virtuous heroine needed to
kick it up a notch as well, fighting her off
in the final standoff wearing a pink prom
dress that would make the ‘80s cringe.
Despite enough gallons of blood and
icky black bile to fill Lake Michigan and a
very dead-eyed demonic Fox, “Jennifer’s
Body” is lacking in real scares, and it
almost seems to be mocking the high
school scare tactics thriller in the same
way that “Juno” mocked the Lifetime
movie teen pregnancy dramas.
What it lacks in scare tactics, it makes
up for by dealing with girl issues in a
very, very twisted way. The entire movie
has the “sandbox friends” competing
right up until the very end, when they
fight over Needy’s boyfriend in a way that
is slightly more extreme than reality, seeing
as how Jennifer wants to kill him.
While “Jennifer’s Body” may be twisted,
it offers a very different and shockingly
realistic view of how girls deal with
the insecurities they have with friends,
although obviously (hopefully) this premise
is so far exaggerated to make a pointthat
mean girls always get their due,
courtesy of their supposed “weaker”
friends, a fable that will no doubt
empower every girl's inner high school Plain Jane.
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