Misdirected creativity is a blow to 'Jennifer’s Body'

Steven Strauss: For a title as provocative as “Jennifer’s Body,” audiences should expect at least one scene to raise the heart rate above the level of sheer boredom. Instead, screenwriter Diablo Cody’s demonic twist on the typical high school coming-of-age drama coasts by with no semblance of cohesion or excitement.

Responsibility for the movie’s many failings rests squarely on Cody’s shoulders, as she completely forces her trademark look-how-pithy-I-can-sound style. Whereas “Juno”—her Academy Award-winning debut—had director Jason Reitman to rein in her spastic style, director Karyn Kusama lets Cody run wild, resulting in a fatally inconsistent tone.

As for Megan Fox, who asserted that “Transformers” wasn’t a movie about acting, this appears to be true of every movie in which she stars. With “Jennifer’s Body,” Diablo Cody comes one step closer to joining that dreaded list of one-hit wonders.

Daniel Valella: Cody is a genius—she’s smart, original, and cutting-edge—but this doesn’t mean every effort of hers is a masterpiece.

“Jennifer’s Body” tries to hone in on the little trademarks that made “Juno” an instant hit—the outlandish rural Minnesota backdrop, the “honest-to-blog”-like lingo, and the emotion-mixer scenes à la Quentin Tarantino or the Coen brothers (should we laugh, be horrified, or pity the characters?)—all to little effect other than to confuse the audience.

Nevertheless, her creativity is here. Some scenes, while rather dubious, are uncannily funny. The scene in which Jennifer and Needy (Fox and Amanda Seyfried) are on top of each other, making out in bed—a play on Fox’s racy, real-life bisexuality—is a must-see. After Needy impales Jennifer through the chest with a giant rod, Jennifer’s response, uttered through her bloody, lascivious teeth, is, “Do you have a tampon?” That’s classic.

Strauss: Calling a writer a genius after only one script is unjustified, especially considering her second cinematic effort is not a masterpiece, and shows she can only work in her previously established repertoire. With “Jennifer’s Body,” instead of letting the story dictate the style of writing, Cody forces her style onto the horror world. To make matters worse, Kusama does little to visually create a world in which this dialogue could be believable, resulting in a tonal rift between the language and images.

After suffering through all the undefined characters, insane plot twists, and nonexistent themes, the only reaction to the tampon line is a roll of the eyes.

Cody is talented, but she needs to realize that the different universes in which her material exists call for different styles of writing. Here, she seems to just stick to what’s most comfortable, making this a film without risk, and thus not worth seeing.

Valella: “Jennifer’s Body” seems to be the film Cody has always dreamed of writing. Her references in “Juno” to Dario Argento (and to horror films on the whole) stem from her childlike love of the genre. As a result, her latest effort is quite puerile, but moviegoers can choose whether to embrace the kiddiness of the movie or simply to scoff at its idiosyncratic inconsistencies. To choose the former is to enjoy an odd yet reasonably intelligent horror flick that is perfectly cast. Only Amanda Seyfried can seem so serious in such ridiculous on-screen scenarios, and only Megan Fox can play the role of a demonic, man-eating sex symbol who goes both ways. Granted, more than a few parts of the movie may be too preposterous or morally skewed for some cinematic palates, but “Jennifer’s Body,” overall, is a fun and crazy film for an aficionado of nutty cinema.