Aniston and Reilly give the best of many excellent performances. A few plotty scenes aside, this quietly directed drama paints a sensitive, sympathetic portrait of modern malaise, and has a smart sense of humor as a bonus.

The extraordinary quality of White's script and Arteta's direction lifts the meticulously cast actors to the height of their abilities. "Friends" star Aniston digs deep but is never showy. Reilly reveals the tenderness, vulnerability and hidden depth that can lurk within a slob, and Nelson has some of the film's most outrageously funny and inspired moments.

A slow burn. A portrait of the mundane humor and horror of everyday life, it scalds nerves you may have never thought existed. And yet the film is funny, almost hilariously at times.

Aniston delivers an utterly un-Rachel-like performance. It's neurosis-free and unmannered, by turns funny, sad and profound.

There's more to everyone here than we're initially led to think. The Good Girl is like a neurotically charged post-millennial take on the trailer-park comedies that Jonathan Demme once claimed for himself.

Doesn't have the daring lunacy of "Chuck and Buck," the previous collaboration by director Miguel Arteta and writer Mike White. Yet it gets closer to the troubled, lonely soul of its main character.

A sharp-tongued, subtly nuanced tragicomedy starring Jennifer Aniston, who shows her depth as a serious actress in this dark tale.

It's a deft sleight-of-story Aniston, White and Arteta pull off, giving us a character who seems more than she is, but is really less than she appears.

Jennifer Aniston has at last decisively broken with her "Friends" image in an independent film of satiric fire and emotional turmoil. It will no longer be possible to consider her in the same way.

A comedy as black as the asphalt desert of a mall parking lot.

This one comes up short in terms of visual flair. But it delivers amusingly observed characters, consistent laughs underscored by the poignancy of unfulfilled existences and winning performances from a terrific cast captained by Jennifer Aniston.

Like "Chuck & Buck," The Good Girl is a droll, well-acted, character-driven comedy with unexpected deposits of feeling.

Arteta targets Middle American ennui with wit, compassion and no shortage of ornery malaise.

Succeeds as a moody, evocative, and pleasing film, one that underscores its indie roots in sentiment as well as style