Title: Janie Jones
Directed By: David M. Rosenthal
Written By: David M. Rosenthal
Cast: Abigail Breslin, Alessandro Nivola, Elisabeth Shue
Screened at: Broadway, NYC, 10/13/11
Opens: October 28, 2011
At first glance, “Janie Jones” looks like the perfect picture for the Lifetime series, all about sweetness and light with little cynicism. However, stay with it and you’ll discover that the movie deserves far more credit than you’d think given two superb performances. This is not say that there’s anything in “Janie Jones” that’s unpredictable or that takes us away from the typical trajectory of good news, bad news, good news. Besides, there’s an array of fourteen original songs which are all pleasant, albeit not the sort that would rock the house from the rooftops.
Abigail Breslin (“Little Miss Sunshine”), no longer nine years old but of Bat Mitzrah age, co-anchors the film as the title character, Janie Jones, an adorable, talented girl who deserves better than she got, though she does find life almost ecstatic once she meets her drunk, druggie dad for the first time in the last thirteen years.
Could you have guessed what happens next? Maybe there’s a small chance that the dad, fading rocker Ethan Brand (Alessandro Nivola), will deny paternity. He may even challenge the woman who appears on the scene in front of the entire band insisting that she, Mary Ann Jones (Elisabeth Shue) and Ethan had an affair way back when and that she now is unable to care for their daughter because she’s in rehab. We all know that Janie and Ethan will be inseparable, he, a chain-smoking, hot-tempered fellow will keep being a chain-smoking, hot-tempered fellow but he will discover that there’s no love like that of a man for a daughter. (It helps that he wasn’t around during the diaper stage but meet Janie only when the kid is a well-behaved, talented singer-guitarist who gets her dad out of trouble more than once.)
“Janie Jones” is written and directed by David M. Rosenthal, whose “Falling Up” looks at a nursing school dropout who become a doorman in an elite apartment building. He evokes good work from the ensemble, including other band members and from Peter Stormare as Sloan, the group’s manager. Frances Fisher turns up as Lily, the band leader’s haute bourgeois mom, who is hit up for money which she grants only when she’s convinced that she’s in the presence of her granddaughter.
Rated PG-13. 107 minutes. (c) 2011 by Harvey Karten Member: NY Film Critics Online
Story – C-
Acting – B
Technical – B
Overall – B-
