Aniston shines as 'The Good Girl'

I wonder if Jennifer Aniston is sick of doing "Friends." Could she be dreaming of a career in film, hoping for that moment to put it all behind her and maybe get a little Hollywood respect? Sure, she is filthy rich and married to Brad Pitt, but maybe every day she wakes up wondering why she's stuck in a sitcom rut, eager to find the role that will turn it around for her. \nSo she decided to do "The Good Girl." In an ironic and fitting decision, I suppose, Aniston snagged the role of Justine Last, a down-and-out 30-year-old cosmetics clerk from Texas struggling to come to grips with the mundane, pathetic routine that her life has become. Day after day she leaves her sub-Kmart employer, The Retail Rodeo, where she despises the entire staff, only to come home to her pot-smoking, house-painting husband, Phil (John C. Reilly), who is glued with equal force to both the TV and his best friend Bubba (Tim Blake Nelson). Not only this, Justine and Phil are struggling to have a child, one of the many roadblocks in their shaky marriage.\nThis is all until Justine meets Holden (Jake Gyllenhaal), a manic-depressive, 22-year-old introvert with a passion for prose who happens to be the new clerk at The Retail Rodeo. Drawn to Holden's adolescent-angst lament that nobody "gets him" and feeling that nobody "gets her" either, Justine begins a passionate and ill-advised affair with Holden that sparks a confused journey of self-loathing and discovery. \nSounds pretty heavy, doesn't it? Well, it is. However, it's also wickedly funny. And that's the real charm, I think, of "The Good Girl." Expertly cast and superbly acted, Miguel Arteta's film is a successful blend of sharp humor and painful drama that commands many hearty laughs and plenty of uneasy seat-shifting. \nThe modest film has its flaws and is certainly far from perfect, but as a small tale of love, depression, adultery and reckoning -- all with plenty of good laughs -- it does not disappoint. If it's time for Jennifer Aniston to break free from TV and her own routine on "Friends," then this is the role that will likely give her that opportunity.