The Good Girl

DVD REVIEW

Movie:

Disc:

The Movie: Married to a pot-smoking, seemingly infertile housepainter (John C. Reilly), Justine (Jennifer Aniston, who, in a very un-Rachel-like role, proves her range), an unhappy clerk at the dreary Retail Rodeo, begins an affair with Holden (Jake Gyllenhaal), a younger coworker fixated on The Catcher in the Rye. Directed by Miguel Arteta and written by Mike White (the pair behind 2000's Chuck & Buck), The Good Girl is a thoughtful, challenging, uncondescending comedy-drama of manners and morality.

The Disc: The extras are simple and effective-thankfully, no blatant propaganda here. Aniston provides a humble, insightful scene-specific commentary; Arteta and White's full-length commentary, however, is a bit dry. In the deleted scenes, there are humorous displays of the characters' quirkiness, one gag-reel-type segment where Aniston repeatedly hits an extra in the eye, and several scenes that reveal too much, including one in which, according to Arteta and White, Gyllenhaal's character appears a bit too crazy.

-C.M.