Limerculer
A waste of 90 minutes of my life
pointyfilippa
The movie runs out of plot and jokes well before the end of a two-hour running time, long for a light comedy.
Mabel Munoz
Just intense enough to provide a much-needed diversion, just lightweight enough to make you forget about it soon after it’s over. It’s not exactly “good,” per se, but it does what it sets out to do in terms of putting us on edge, which makes it … successful?
kenjha
The life and times of a porn star are chronicled in this B grade movie, featuring a number of notable actors. While not beautiful, newcomer Marquis (shades of Angelina Jolie) is a competent actress and an alluring presence as Moon, the porn star. Woods plays her father, a man suffering from Parkinson's disease, and this character becomes rather tiresome after a while. Rapaport is appropriately creepy as a sleazy used car salesman that Moon has a run-in with. The film is not exploitative by any means. It primarily focuses on Moon's relationships with her father, her friends (Dawson plays one of them), and her new boyfriend (Pardue).
Robert J. Maxwell
After the success of the inexpensively made trade movie "Boogie Nights," one might expect a series of even cheaper and less skillful ripoffs. The usual trajectory for ripoffs would be more sex and less character.I suppose in some ways, we wouldn't have "This Girl's Life" if we hadn't had "Boogie Nights," but this film is actually pretty good. If the earlier film was mostly an ensemble effort, this one depends on Juliette Marquis. We see things almost exclusively from her point of view. She's a porn star with a heart of gold and some brains. It sounds like a cliché, but she pulls it off okay. She's not exactly beautiful but she is sexy and exotic and has a nasal voice that sometimes drops into the lower register.But Marquis gets surprisingly good support from such mainstream players as Rosario Dawson, and adequate support from Cheyenne Silver, a genuine star of sex films who has a fresh-faced attractiveness that suggests she grew up on a farm and fed on nothing but cream and ripe strawberries. Anyone who wants to see what she looks like all over can easily have his curiosity satisfied with a bit of effort.James Woods is super as Pops, Marquis' father who is stricken with Parksinson's disease. He's a courageous actor, wandering around in public with what seems to be an enormous head and a shrunken flabby body. The only investment of ego on display is his talent.If "Boogie Nights" showed us that the sex movie industry of the 1970s was like a family, "This Girl's Life" demonstrates that the family is not entirely functional these days. The head of the studio keeps carrying on paternally about how we are all one big -- incestuous -- family, but when he wants one of his girls to do something that she does not want to do, he prompts her to do a line of coke and shoves her roughly against a wall. Spare the rod and spoil the child, you know.The director has Marquis talk directly to the camera on several occasions, as if this were a reality TV show. She shows us how a microvideocamera works, a "spy camera" like that used in police and FBI stings. And there are times when scenes appear as if shot with one of those tiny cameras, all fuzzy and with horizontal lines. Not sure what the point of that was. And I'm not sure what happens to Pop either. His case seems to be hanging in the air at the end when, after a violent encounter with a man whose life Marquis has just professionally put an end to, she takes off with her naive young monogamous lover.I assume -- I HOPE -- that she finally got back to taking care of Pops, because his disorder is rather advanced and it would take him an hour to peel a banana.In any case, the very amateurishness of some of the performances contributes to the documentary feel of the film, but it's a documentary that is emotionally charged.A surprise, well worth watching.
SnowBoardersSuck
How can you go wrong with the supporting cast? James Woods' portrayal as leading character's-Moon-father afflicted with Parkinson's, Michael Rappaport, Tomas Arana, etc.? C'mon. The film was about a woman's journey through her brief career of porn, but the real story was the great interaction between her and her father, whom she really has a love and compassion for. the plot summary says it's a "Slice of life take on life of international porn celebrity, Moon, and her musings on modern life, love and loss", but I didn't feel her "huge" or "international" success while watching. Yeah, the plot wandered, but you could follow it and enjoy it, too. The dialogue and the feel of the movie is believable. The only thing I did not like was Kip Pardue's character. Real name- Kevin Ian Pardue. Get it? It's an acronym, and clever as Christopher Grace calling himself by half his name-Topher Grace. Anyway, Pardue has not matured yet and I only recall him in Remember the Titans as a high-schooler and he still looks like one. Supposedly he'll be 30 years old in September '06??? But Pardue is a boy and he may never achieve believable adult roles with that baby face goofiness. Trying to cast him as a credible "man" in any film, especially this one, does not work. And giving his blind date character an upscale dwelling and some feel good lines made me anxious for the scenes to end. Yeah, let's give the pizza delivery boy a pimp crib and inject him with empathy and compassion, yeah that'll work. And I love it when actors portray characters who are given their same name in the movie, like he was-how embarrassing! News Flash to Hollywood-Kip Pardue is the 21st century's Anthony Michael Hall, who went from Russ Griswold, to bully in Edward Scissorhands, to Dead Zone retreads. Okay, Hall was also a cog in The Breakfast Club and Weird Science wheel of fortune. But cute actor boys have a short expiration date, and pretty much never go one to be leading men. Other than that inescapable distraction, this movie was entertaining. Another reviewer from Argentina commented this was the director, Ashley Baron Cohen's "best movie to date." I'm sorry, who? Umm, as if this guy is Coppolla or Scorcese or something? Oh, and the DVD extras like the interviews with Juliette Marquis were long and boring. She came across disturbing and twitchy. I liked her acting better than her real self. But I must say that Marquis resembles Angelina Jolie, except MUCH more beautiful and sensually innocent. Those eyes are so, so, je ne sais quois. The other interview was with Rosario Dawson and she comes across like a dork and had nothing of interest to say. Too bad she agreed to be droopy and naked in the tent scene with Colin Farrell in Alexander, but stayed clothed in this movie. Shrewd career decision, Rosario. The extra interviews should have included James Woods, who probably said no. Or why not some of the other girls who were real stripper/porn actresses playing the porn actresses in the movie? Instead we only get Marquis, Dawson, and a promo ad for Parkinson's Disease?
jpschapira
When projects as ambiguous as "This Girl's Life" arrive, we have to be objective enough to write about them, due to the fact of not being used to them. Ash, put everything in his project, and if he didn't get all the stuff he wanted, he got a big part.It's not everyday that a character stands to tell us, or at least, to tell the camera everything she dos, being the character a porn star. That's how Moon (Juliette Marquis) tells it; the character that carries with the plot of the movie, and is the "Mohammed Ali" of porn. Was she violated when young? No. ¿She didn't go to school? Least, she was between the best of her class. People encounter her and notice a class y beauty different to the stereotyped women that do her job."I tried because of curiosity", Moon explains Kip (Kip Pardue) in their first date. Kip had found her attractive and even when he didn't know that little detail, he succumbs into a fascination that leads to an intelligent and mature conversation between two persons that have an obvious chemistry to form a couple. So the cell phone rings; it's Pops (James Woods), who has Parkinson's, and Moon lives for him.The latter mentioned conversation and other peculiar situations are showings of the good screenplay that Ash has constructed. In the same we presence the movement of the porn industry (remember "Boogie Nights"), with its Oscars and promotions. The script seems to have knowledge in that matter, which is good enough, added up to uncountable meetings between people, a satisfying visual style and an interesting, if not adequate music.Besides all this, that doesn't expect much from anyone, the real talent of Ash seems to shine in the direction of his cast. Mainly the sparkling Juliette Marquis, owner of an unexploited talent we'll see soon, and of a body language with intense complexity. I also mention the fact that her performance makes us love a character that isn't exactly what we could call lovable. In addition, we get Kip Pardue in his best performance to date, proving again he is actually an actor. James Woods is lucid and intense in a role that is easy to play; but he doesn't care if it is easy…He takes it to its highest level.The rest of the cast includes fine performances all the way from Rosario Dawson (Martine), Michael Rapaport (Terry), Ioan Gruffudd (Daniel), Cheyenne Silver (Cheyenne), Isaiah Washington (Shane), Kam Heskin (Jessie) and many more.Surprises are also included; and I wonder: What will be the next thing to come out from this twisted or maybe brilliant mind?
