Information about The Good Girl

The Good Girl
Directed by	Miguel Arteta
Produced by	Matthew Greenfield
Written by	Mike White
Starring	Jennifer Aniston Jake Gyllenhaal John C. Reilly Zooey Deschanel
Distributed by	Fox Searchlight Pictures
Release date(s)	August 7, 2002
Running time	93 min
Language	English
Budget	$8,000,000
IMDb profile

The Good Girl is a 2002 film from the Chuck & Buck team, with director Miguel Arteta and writer Mike White.

Plot

The film opens showing a dusty Texas town in the middle of nowhere, and tells the story of Justine Last (Jennifer Aniston), a thirty-year-old married woman who works at Retail Rodeo, a local store reminiscent of Wal-Mart. Justine's life seems rather mundane. She works with an eccentric group of characters, including Cheryl (Zooey Deschanel), a cynical, young girl who inserts subliminal profanities in announcements to the sleepwalking customers; Gwen (Deborah Rush), the overly peppy, older woman who works with Justine in the cosmetics department; and Corny (Mike White), the Bible-obsessed security guard.

Justine returns home every night to her dim-witted husband Phil (John C. Reilly), a house painter who spends more time getting high on the couch with his buddy Bubba (Tim Blake Nelson) than doing any work. Justine feels trapped, and there seems like no sign of escape.

Then, one day, a new, young cashier named Holden Worther (Jake Gyllenhaal) starts working at the Retail Rodeo and Justine is almost immediately taken by him. Holden keeps to himself mostly and always has his nose in a copy of The Catcher in the Rye claiming that his own life parallels that of Holden Caulfield. Justine and Holden start spending a lot of time together, having lunch everyday and even hanging out after work. One day, Holden does not show up to work, but sends a letter to Justine, telling her that if she does not meet him at 5 p.m. that day behind the Chuck E. Cheese, she will never see him again. Justine plans to go, and after taking a friend to the hospital, meets up with Holden. They go to a motel, which Justine pays for with her credit card. There, in the motel, Justine and Holden have sex, and Justine begins to feel more alive than she's been in a long time. It is the only film in which Jennifer Aniston's nude body is revealed; hence the rating.

Things become complicated when her husband Phil's friend, Bubba discovers her affair with Holden and blackmails her into having sex with him, which she reluctantly does. Holden, who had been watching her with Bubba, reveals his emotionally disturbed side and calls Justine a whore for having betrayed him when she had sex with Bubba. Things take an added twist when Justine becomes pregnant, with Holden's child, upon learning that Phil is sterile due to his many years of getting high. Phil eventually finds out about Justine's affair after a bill for the motel arrives. Phil breaks down and asks if the child is his, she lies and tells him it is. In the movie, Justine is faced with a choice, to hit the high road and begin a new life for herself and her unborn child or to stay with her mundane life, she chooses to stay. The plot takes on an added twist when Holden steals $15,000 from the safe at work and ends up committing suicide at the motel where he and Justine had gone to when they were having an affair. The movie ends with Justine finally accepting her life with Phil with the addition of their new baby.

Inspiration

The story is a modern reworking of Flaubert's Madame Bovary and Lawrence's Lady Chatterly's Lover.

The film derives inspiration and source material from The Sorrows of Young Werther, a loosely autobiographical novel by Johann Wolfgang Goethe about a suicide and unrequited love. This is especially notable due to Holden's last name, "Worther".

Cast

• Jennifer Aniston as Justine Last
• Jake Gyllenhaal as Thomas "Holden" Worther
• John C. Reilly as Phil Last
• John Carroll Lynch as Jack Field, store manager
• Tim Blake Nelson as Bubba, Phil's best friend
• Zooey Deschanel as Cheryl, on the PA, then make-up in the store
• Mike White as Corny, security guard

External links

• Official website
• Cloverfield Press, producer Matthew Greenfield's publishing company