Jennifer's Body

Below, the R-rated "redband" trailer for "Jennifer's Body," screenwriter/blogger Diablo Cody's followup to "Juno," evidently based on the STUNNINGLY original premise of a murdered/beaten (raped, also, I infer?) high school cheerleader who "comes back" as a literally man-eating demon (or maybe she was always that way and this "woke it up?" I dunno.)



Here's what's bugging me: Diablo Cody is ONLY famous for ONE thing - her dialogue. Nobody cares (so far) about her plotting, her stories or her characterizations - she's a "brand" based on her ability/prediliction for a writing style in which characters blurt out quippy, ironic, reference-laden dialogue like a belt-fed machine-gun hooked up to Liz Lemon. And that's great, good on her, I liked "Juno," yadda yadda. But in this....

...look: if the whole "hook" of this movie is that it's a teen horror deal but with a focus on Cody's celebrated dialogue... what would possess you to hire a talentless, personality-deficient non-actor like MEGAN FOX for the lead role? I've seen this woman trying to deliver dialogue... it's like watching a quadraplegic try to moonwalk. I understand she's mainly here to stand around wearing vaugely post-orgasmic expressions and possibly pop the twins out... but geez, there are Youtube videos of "talking" cats who can form coherent sentences more ably than Megan Fox can.

And speaking of the dialogue...

"I thought you only ates boys!"

"I go both ways."

Yikes. See, here's the other problem: Cody's style is often afflicted with David Mamet's Disease - in that it ONLY sounds really, really good when spoken in the right way by the right actor. Nobody in this seems to be "the right actor."