Copernicus violates JENNIFER'S BODY at the 1st round of Midnite Madness at Toronto's International Film Festival!

Hey folks, Harry here with the first report from this year's TORONTO INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL - and it comes via Copernicus! Our faithful festival astronomer! And boy did he pick a film we're all dying to see - ever since those awesome images of Megan on that dock. Sigh. How many wonderful nights did you spend studying those pics to figure out what was going on with the no nipples thing? Now we have a movie. Here's Copernicus...

At tonight's Midnight Madness screening, I actually saw a teen, scream into her phone, "OMG I was standing right next to Megan Fox!!!" This teen was apparently just there to do that -- she didn't stay for the movie. And there was much celebrating the presence of Diablo Cody, Oscar winner, gracing us with her presence at a genre midnight screening. I have never seen so many flashbulbs at a Toronto Midnight Madness screening. Seriously though, calm the fuck down, people. Citizen Kane this ain't. It isn't even HALLOWEEN. Maybe the closest comparison is a good episode of BUFFY, or movie-wise, maybe THE FACULTY (ouch!). While I was in the minority liking THE FACULTY at the time, Harry's Oscar-worthy performance aside, I wouldn't exactly call it timeless. JENNIFER'S BODY is entertaining, watchable, and at times great. But as a whole it fails to resonate. If you are a horror geek, Diablo Cody-obsessed, or are 14-18, rush right out and see it. Otherwise, catch it on DVD. Or cellphone, or however the Diablo Cody demographic watches movies. The Buffyesque premise is that the hottest girl in school is not just surface-cunty, but demon to the core. A literal man-eater. She doesn't start out that way, but the reason she ends up there is one of the more clever bits of the script, so I won't spoil it. She alternates between fucked-up demon behavior and normal bitchy teen behavior, confounding her BFF Needy (Amanda Seyfried). Needy for some reason thinks her friend chucking up spiky black demon juice is weird, but overlookable. So is her eating a significant fraction of the cast. That is, until she picks on Needy's boyfriend, Chip (Johnny Simmons), at which point a supernatural bitch fight ensues. I know there's a huge Megan Fox backlash right now, i.e. she's a tool of Michael Bay and all, but nobody but Michael Bay deserves the blame for the utter disasters of the Transformers movies. Sure she's overhyped as the second coming of Angelina, but it isn't all her fault. She does a good job in this. And who knew she looks even better as the undead than she does with the Michael Bay-mandated shoe leather tan? But as good as she is, Amanda Seyfried and Johnny Simmons are the real stars. Their parts may not be as juicy, but they play them with as much nuance as you can get away with in a horror movie. As Needy, Seyfried has to cover a huge range, from nerdy, needy friend, to loving girlfriend (yes!), jailhouse punk (oh yes!), and lesbian lover (hell yes!). Somehow, she manages to do it with subtlety, no mean feat amidst the demons and Diablospeak. In contrast, Johnny Simmons has the one dimenstional "loving boyfriend" Michael Cera role here, but he just has such natural charisma that he is automatically compelling. Much like in the Buffyverse, JUNO fans won't be surprised that in the Codyverse teens talk in stylized, snarky banter before slaying their friends. If I'm giving Diablo Cody a hard time, maybe it is because I expect a lot from her. I'm on record as loving JUNO. And she does produce some truly great lines here -- lines that will be added to pop culture, and quoted for decades. But this comes at a price -- some of the teenspeak and references are just so "of the moment" that the movie will seem horribly dated in just a few years. And it is so laser-focused on the teen demographic that it is in danger of annoying alienating everyone else. In fact, at the Q&A, Megan Fox said that when Diablo Cody was not around, she sometimes asked the director, "What the fuck does this mean?" And the director, Karyn Kusama would reply, "I don't know!" But they shot it anyway, and it mostly works. Megan Fox said she's only now getting some of the lines, months later. Finally a few words on Karyn Kusama. She's no slouch -- there are some nice touches here, including a well-executed burning bar scene, and a memorable hovering-chick-fight above a bed. And the soundtrack is great -- anyone who puts a Black Kids song into a movie is a goddam genius in my book. But she bungles a few opportunities. The Megan Fox coming out of the lake scene is horribly disappointing. As we learned from SNAKES ON A PLANE, one sure recipe for failure is to have the internet fantasy of the scene dwarf the reality of it. The internet isn't just this wacky teenspeak thing from Diablo Cody's dialog. With geysers of blood, hot, hot lesbian kissing and fighting. and some the best horror dialog ever, there's plenty to see here. If it didn't have so much teen pandering this might have been a movie I could love.