Here's the odd thing about this quirky little film -- its "happy ending" completely undercuts the happy ending the heroine is looking for.
Toby (Gertz) is a Jersey Girl looking for a GQ kind of guy -- a non-Guido with money, nice clothes and good manners who will take her away from it all. Sal (McDermott) is a Queens Guy who's made it big in Manhattan and is dating Social Register material. Toby wants Sal, Sal wants Society, but in the end Toby and Sal get each other. But what happens in order for this to occur? Sal trashes his well-paying career, is humiliated by his girlfriend, intentionally wrecks the Mercedes that first caught Toby's eye,and probably won't long be hanging on to that nice apartment overlooking Central Park. He rejects what it takes to be Manhattan material in order to be with his Jersey Girl -- he re-embraces his Queens roots.
So how does this make him different than the Guidos Toby has been fleeing in the first place? Are we supposed to believe that they're what she really wanted all along, now that she's ended up with one?
The toughest thing about this for me was the endless cliche about what Jersey Girls are like in the first place. I defy anyone to find a 20-something in, say, Short Hills NJ who would dress, act, talk, think like the stereotypes depicted in the film. It's a movie about Jersey Girls with a kind of Philip Roth-like self-hatred about being from Jersey. Toby isn't smarter or more stylish than her friends -- she just wants someone with money. That is supposed to ennoble her? In the end, she doesn't get the guy with the money anyway -- perhaps as fitting punishment for her greediness?
If so, then who's the heroine of this movie, anyway?
Toby (Gertz) is a Jersey Girl looking for a GQ kind of guy -- a non-Guido with money, nice clothes and good manners who will take her away from it all. Sal (McDermott) is a Queens Guy who's made it big in Manhattan and is dating Social Register material. Toby wants Sal, Sal wants Society, but in the end Toby and Sal get each other. But what happens in order for this to occur? Sal trashes his well-paying career, is humiliated by his girlfriend, intentionally wrecks the Mercedes that first caught Toby's eye,and probably won't long be hanging on to that nice apartment overlooking Central Park. He rejects what it takes to be Manhattan material in order to be with his Jersey Girl -- he re-embraces his Queens roots.
So how does this make him different than the Guidos Toby has been fleeing in the first place? Are we supposed to believe that they're what she really wanted all along, now that she's ended up with one?
The toughest thing about this for me was the endless cliche about what Jersey Girls are like in the first place. I defy anyone to find a 20-something in, say, Short Hills NJ who would dress, act, talk, think like the stereotypes depicted in the film. It's a movie about Jersey Girls with a kind of Philip Roth-like self-hatred about being from Jersey. Toby isn't smarter or more stylish than her friends -- she just wants someone with money. That is supposed to ennoble her? In the end, she doesn't get the guy with the money anyway -- perhaps as fitting punishment for her greediness?
If so, then who's the heroine of this movie, anyway?