Word: afflecks
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...pair, Lopez gets far less time onscreen—a wedding scene was reportedly cut as a result of the Gigli backlash—but she conveys a surprising tenderness and insecurity in her small role as Gertrude, a polished literary agent and the wife of Ollie Trinke (Affleck), a workaholic music publicist whose pathological impatience is both his greatest asset and worst liability...
...Though Affleck should never attempt to cry on film (or say the line “I’m gonna be the best daddy in the world!”), Jersey Girl nevertheless benefits from his non-method approach to acting, which fits in with the film’s down-to-earth style and subject matter. Like all of Smith’s previous movies, Jersey Girl is almost as littered as New Jersey itself with curse words, sex jokes, and an long list of A-list cameos (some amusing if predictable, others genuinely surprising...
Then again, the other guys can't play Ben Affleck--which Affleck does, on TV's guest couches, brilliantly. He radiates not the danger of the modern movie star but the domestic familiarity of the modern television star. He banters, puts himself down and plays along with all the Gigli jokes. That blithe masochism is career smart, of course, but it also suggests a species of heroic ordinariness that Affleck rarely shows in his movie roles. He may be squirming on the inside, but in public he's Ben Affable...
Really? Then where are all the other current Ben Afflecks? Clowns aside, there is a shallow pool of American leading men in their 30s. Affleck's pal Matt Damon has had hits and flops, though fewer of each than Ben. Same with Edward Norton. They all bound from action picture to indie, as Affleck has--from Jerry Bruckheimer (Armageddon, Pearl Harbor) to Kevin Smith (Chasing Amy, Dogma, Jersey Girl), from starring in potential franchise pictures (The Sum of All Fears, Daredevil) to doing cameos in films by friends...
...difference? The other men have reps as serious actors. Among them, Affleck is a lightweight. Hand him a big emotional scene, and he'll produce tears on cue, but they're Shirley Temple tears, the miming of a precocious child actor (which Affleck was). He's less at ease with explosive feelings than with small gestures. His specialty is the upward glance of exasperation, which works best when he's playing a work-obsessed cad in need of comeuppance and redemption...