One can go out on the street, and ask any guy—or girl—who the hottest female celebrity is, and just about all of them would say the same thing: Megan Fox. Megan Fox has quickly become America’s foxiest celebrity, and is mostly remembered for her role in the Transformers movies as Mikaela Banes, but has recently starred as Jennifer in Jennifer’s Body.
Jennifer’s Body centers on the stereotypical high school it girl named Jennifer and her not-so-pretty best friend, Needy. After a disaster at a local bar, things between Needy and Jennifer change as Jennifer suddenly comes out with a different personality. Newly-possessed Jennifer develops an appetite for human flesh, and starts picking off her male classmates one-by-one. As Needy starts to realize the situation, she decides that she has to save her classmates, boyfriend, and even herself before it’s too late.
Jennifer’s Body was written by the Academy Award winning writer, Diablo Cody, who also wrote the surprising hit, Juno. Although Juno was pretty good, I felt like the writing was sloppy, and Cody focused on making it more of a comedy than a horror film. Just like in every horror film, there was an intense build-up of events, but eventually, everything became a cliché.
Other than the writing and the genre confusion, Megan Fox was probably the only things that made the movie fun to watch. After catching the disastrously awful Transformers action flick this past summer, I had concluded that looks was all she really had going for her. But thankfully, in this movie, she proved me wrong.
As for the other actress, the only other movies I’ve seen Amanda Seyfried in are Mean Girls and Mamma Mia, which were both good movies. Other than that, I hadn’t really seen her in anything else. She was just really, there.
The critics and I seem to have the same conclusion for once: Jennifer’s Body is average. It wasn’t great, but it wasn’t entirely horrible either. Jennifer’s Body premiered at number five in the box office, only grossing $6.8 million over the weekend. I guess even sexy advertisements claiming “She’s got a Taste for Bad Boys” and Megan Fox in a naughty-school-girl outfit can’t always bring in ticket sales.
On RottenTomatoes.com, the film received a “rotten” 43% and has an average of 5.9 stars on IMDb. Robert Abele from The Los Angeles Times says, “[Cody’s] glib teen-hip dialogue mostly feels like self-conscious splatter over a sorely lackluster scare flick.” On the other hand, Roger Ebert from The Chicago Sun-Times proclaims that, “[Cody’s] screenplay brings to this material a certain edge, a kind of gleeful relish that’s uncompromising. This isn’t your assembly-line teen horror thriller.”
Honestly, the only reason I went to see Jennifer’s Body was to watch Megan Fox for 100 minutes, and to get a good laugh from Diablo Cody’s brilliant sense of humor, but I really didn’t get much of what I wanted from the film. Diablo Cody should stick to writing indie-comedies, and Megan Fox needs to work with better material. All in all, if you need to waste some time, Jennifer’s Body probably isn’t worth the money.