Jennifer's Body

JENNIFER'S BODY (Karyn Kusama, 2009)

In JENNIFER'S BODY Megan Fox and Amanda Seyfried are unlikely best friends who find themselves at odds when one of them becomes possessed by a demon. Carrying the unflattering nickname Needy, Seyfried's character is a regular teenager who has always played second fiddle to Fox's Jennifer, the hottest girl in high school.

Jennifer knows how desirable and popular she is and flaunts the power her looks give her. The wounds Jennifer inflicts are purely emotional until a demon enters her body and takes control.

Rather than an out-and-out horror film, JENNIFER'S BODY is a supernatural high school dark comedy with a feminist bent courtesy of director Karyn Kusama and JUNO screenwriter Diablo Cody. In blending so many genres it's inevitable that JENNIFER'S BODY is somewhat confused about its identity and can't withstand the strain of a disjointed plot. An inciting tragedy and Jennifer and Needy's connection are among the points that lack sufficient explanation for what follows in the film.

Kusama and Cody aim to examine the power and fear of female sexuality, particularly among adolescents, but the muddled second half can't fulfill their ambitions. Seyfried, the film's true lead, turns in a solid and sensitive performance while Fox fails to locate the nuance in her character. She's not entirely to blame. The script doesn't clarify her motivation for a decision in a key scene and then leaves the audience in the dark about what makes her behave so monstrously.

Cody has received some backlash for her signature slang-heavy dialogue. Such criticism has merit, mainly because of the showy but empty nature of her words, but her sharp conversations occasionally draw blood and laughs, such as when she takes on disparate subjects as the tween flick AQUAMARINE and 9/11 fetishization.

Like a girl transforming into a woman during adolescence, JENNIFER'S BODY aspires to be smart, hip, sexy, and scary. Kusama and Cody don't fully succeed in making JENNIFER'S BODY as clever as intended, but in deploying Fox's physical allure as a weapon in the film and to prospective viewers of it, they unleash some potent ideas and subvert the genre.

Grade: C

Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen

TRANSFORMERS: REVENGE OF THE FALLEN (Michael Bay, 2009)

Sam Witwicky (Shia LaBeouf) and the altruistic Autobots, led by Optimus Prime (Peter Cullen), may have defeated the Decepticons at the end of TRANSFORMERS, but you can't keep evil alien robots down for long.

In TRANSFORMERS: REVENGE OF THE FALLEN college-bound Sam discovers that he still has a shard of the Allspark, the powerful cube battled over and thought to be destroyed in the first film. Even a small piece of the Allspark can turn ordinary machines into malevolent transformers. Naturally, the Decepticons want this sliver so they can revive their ocean-entombed leader Megatron (Hugo Weaving).

Sam gives the fragment to his girlfriend Mikaela (Megan Fox) for safe keeping but not before he accidentally touches it and has his brain imprinted with visions of alien symbols. This robot language holds clues to the location of an ancient machine that Megatron and his master The Fallen (Tony Todd) want to find so they can harvest the sun's energy.

TRANSFORMERS: REVENGE OF THE FALLEN'S state-of-the-art special effects and humongous scale often make it a sight to behold, but the technical achievements are serving to prop up an ungainly and incomprehensible assault on the senses.

REVENGE OF THE FALLEN isn't significantly different than its predecessor. In fact, the two films are virtually the same. Both of director Michael Bay's franchise behemoths are orgies of robot violence interrupted by exposition payloads delivered through clunky dialogue and goofy, sometimes ill-advised humor. Bay has been criticized before for employing offensive minority stereotypes for laughs, and he's likely to come under fire again, not the least of which is for the shucking and jiving twin Autobots.

The sequel improves the Transformers' character designs, most notably through more distinct facial features, but these changes are often for naught because the robots look like indistinguishable trash-compacted heaps, especially when engaged in combat. Ascertaining which robot is which, let alone what parts of them we're seeing, is a mostly hopeless task.

Whether it's piling up extended action scenes or attempting to spell out the befuddling story's intricacies, TRANSFORMERS: REVENGE OF THE FALLEN is the cinema of overkill. In addition to the main plot points the distended first half crosscuts among the origins of Transformers on earth, an Autobot-military alliance and bureaucratic conflict, Sam's initiation to college life, and his parents' empty nest escapades. The second half is devoted to a thankfully less scattered but ultimately monotonous battle in the Egyptian desert.

With plenty of gigantic, shape-shifting robots ripping it up, the film isn't always a drag, but in this instance, as is usually the case with Bay, more is not for the best. TRANSFORMERS: REVENGE OF THE FALLEN'S 150 minutes is something to endure rather than enjoy.

Grade: D+