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Jennifer's Body


What it's about:

Jennifer (Megan Fox) and 'Needy' Edie (Amanda Seyfried) are best friends living in the hick town of Devil's Kettle. Jennifer's an arrogant, air-headed cheerleader, while Needy is the complete opposite, yet the two girls share a strangely powerful bond. When up-and-coming rock band Low Shoulder, fronted by Nikolai (Adam Brody), visit the town, strange things begin to happen. Jennifer develops a taste for the hormonal boys in her class, leaving Needy with the responsibility of cleaning up the mess she leaves behind.

What we thought:

Getting Transformers hottie Megan Fox to play a horny high school cheerleader has got to be one of the laziest ploys to get audiences - of the male persuasion, most likely - to flock to your movie. Only this no-brainer concept has all the sizzle, and none of the pay-off. As it turns out, you need more than a barely dressed bombshell to make a successful film - a tough lesson learned by the all-girl team of director Karyn Kusama and Oscar-wining screenwriter Diablo Cody when Jennifer's Body tanked at the US box office.

Where Jennifer's Body goes wrong is a curiosity of note. A hot cheerleader feeding (literally) on the horny  boys in her class is a smart and titillating metaphor for teenage angst and female sexuality, which promises the kind of cheap thrills you just can't get at a mainstream cinema. And in the hands of Diablo Cody, who infused the pregnant-teen-with-attitude experience of Juno with a healthy dose of intelligence, the B-grade sensibilities of Jennifer's Body feel like a step in the wrong direction.

As a horror movie, it has its moments, although not necessarily of the scary kind. Hardly any scenes take place during the daytime, the teen characters are in a perpetually foul mood, and there is an alarming lack of irony in the stupid things these kids say in an attempt to sound hip. Jennifer is the worst offender, her arrogance conveyed through her appalling handle on puns ("You're just jealous. You're so Jello. You're lime green Jello and you can't even admit it to yourself") and the tight little outfits she wears to school. It's like Twilight without the soapie romance, Carrie without the tantalising sense of dread, and as a result, Jennifer's Body struggles to find that spark of inspiration to set it apart from most teen horror movies.

Some of the best moments are courtesy of Adam Brody as Nikolai, the rock star wannabe willing to sell his soul to the devil for a shot at the big time. His dark side is masked by a sweet baby-face and guyliner, though his menacing confidence and witty asides are a treat. Unfortunately, he is not the star of this show, and so we are forced to endure more of Jennifer's increasingly tiresome escapade as a maneater (snort!) who needs to feed frequently or lose her powers to be, like, really, really sexy and stuff.

Fox is not, you'll be shocked to discover, a very impressive actress. Sure, she wears those teeny-tiny shorts like they were moulded specifically for her pert behind, but the vacuity of her character doesn’t call for any stretch of the imagination. Seyfried is wasted as the Moaning Myrtle BFF who loves Jennifer despite the crummy way she treats her. When her moment to shine comes around, it's triumphant and unsettling, and shows up the filmmakers' biggest faux pas – they should have switched the lead roles. Now that would have been a more interesting movie.

The strange tone of Jennifer's Body is of a movie that thinks it's smart because it's not actually trying to be smart. And that's just dumb.  What it sets out to achieve above all else is to get you hot under the collar. Why else include a scene of Fox and Seyfried exploring each other's tongues in close-up? Jennifer's Body is 100 minutes of guilty fun, so don’t go looking under the hood. What's under Megan Fox's shirt is what it's all about.

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