Justine, ten-years married to her high school sweetheart, is stuck in a rut. She lives with her housepainter, stoner husband in their small hometown in Texas where she works as a clerk at the Retail Rodeo (a stand-in for Wal-Mart). Husband Phil is just fine with his life (who spends non-working hours stoned) but it's suffocating Justine. Her reaction to the situation is to begin a relationship with an 18-year old co-worker. She's initially attracted to him because he too is depressed about his hopeless existence. What she doesn't know is that he is also a deeply troubled young man. She finds that out soon enough as his part of the relationship becomes overly possessive, and the secret relationship begins to become public.
Jennifer Anniston plays Justine and proves that she possesses greater acting depth than we've seen in Friends. John C. Reilly as her husband and Tim Blake Nelson as his best friend really nail their characters. The weak link acting-wise is Jake Gyllenhaal as the troubled love interest whose performance seems one-dimensional. As his is a key character, this drags on the movie, but the others keep it afloat.
The Good Girl is a pretty-good movie. It was not good enough to garner award scrutiny, but is worth the price of a rental. It'll be interesting to see if Ms. Anniston continues to take non-comedic roles in movies such as this. I hope so.
