Jersey Girl

Jersey Girl is a 2004 American comedy-drama film written, co-edited and directed by Kevin Smith. It stars Ben Affleck and Liv Tyler with George Carlin (in his final onscreen film appearance before his death), Stephen Root, Mike Starr, Raquel Castro, Jason Biggs and Jennifer Lopez in supporting roles. The film follows a widowed man who must take care of his precocious daughter after her mother dies during childbirth. It was the first film written and directed by Smith not to be set in the View Askewniverse as well as the first not to feature appearances by Jay and Silent Bob, although animated versions of them appear in the View Askew logo at the beginning of the film and the still version at the end. At $35 million, not including marketing costs, it was then Smith's biggest-budgeted film, and was a box office bomb, grossing just $36 million. Plot Powerful New York City media publicist Ollie Trinké's wife, Gertrude, dies during childbirth due to an aneurysm. To avoid his grief, he buries himself in his work and ignores his new daughter, Gertie, while his father, Bart, whose own wife died many years earlier, takes a month off from work to take care of her, later returning to work to convince his son to live up to his responsibility as a single parent. Stressed by a crying baby, he insults his client, Will Smith, in front of assembled reporters. He is fired and moves back in with Bart in New Jersey. He eventually apologizes for ignoring Gertie and attributes his public outburst to his grief. Blacklisted by all of New York City's public relations firms over the incident, Ollie has to work as a civil servant in the borough where he now lives. Seven years later, Gertie, now in elementary school, often coaxes him to rent films to watch. At the video store, they meet Maya, a graduate student and one of the clerks, whose uninhibited probing into Ollie's love life almost leads to them having sex. She soon enters their lives.