Mike White, writer of The Good Girl, deserves the most credit here. While there is good direction and good performances all around, the writing tops the lot by getting the audience to feel for the characters and to understand their human nature from start to finish. Plus, there is a even handed amount of humor (sometimes from stoners and sometimes from quirks in the store) to go along with the drama.

And the performances- Jennifer Anniston shows she can actually do something other than Friends and portrays small town Justine with her wants, desperation, disgust, and ultimitely fears. Gyllenhaal is as compelling as her passionately crazy co-worker, self based on The Catcher in the Rye if only to himself; Reilly and Nelson give the best performances of the picture (and should've gotten a little more screen time) as pot head painters with aimless destinies.

The Good Girl is a keen portrayal of small town angst at the never-ending, often monotonous and uninspired/unfortunate basis. One of the better dramedies of the year. A-

Jennifer Aniston excels as small town cashier, stifled in a rudderless marriage and miserable at her boring job, who has an affair with a younger co-worker, leading to a series of confounding personal events. Black comedy is initially bright and biting, subtle about its comedic elements and characters while gently satirizing the middle class aesthetic. Unfortunately, the film takes a wrong turn late in the second-half and never quite recovers, leading to an emotionally unsatisfying finish. The performers are all terrific, especially John C. Reilly as Aniston's pot-smoking husband; but, as the screenplay loses steam so do the actors, and the final events are mechanically offbeat--engineered to be quirky. **1/2 from ****

Jennifer Anniston stars as Justine in "The Good Girl", though she is far from being good in this film. Justine is bored with the monotony and lack of direction in her life. She is especially bored with her husband, Phil (John C. Reilly)--a nice but vacuous guy who'd rather smoke pot and drink beer than anything else. So does she go to her husband about her feelings of inadequacy? Nope. Instead she begins an affair with a co-worker--a disaffected goth-like guy named Holden (Jake Gyllenhaal). Of course this all ends up in HUGE complications--and what exactly these are you'll have to learn for yourself if you see this movie.

This film about dissatisfaction is well made but also very different. There is no nice object lesson in the film nor are the characters particularly nice folks you could are about when their lives go out of control. It also seems to indicate that when you are in trouble, the best course of action is to lie your butt off! Additionally, horrible things happen to nice people and jerks sometimes land on their feet just fine! Obviously, this film is not one you'll want to show the kids due to these lessons...as well as the sexual behavior. If you love Jennifer Anniston and dark humor (though this isn't exactly a comedy),then the film is clearly for you. Others might find it hard to really care about the film or the characters--making it an odd but skippable curio.