"Habeus Corpus!" shouts the headline of local Toronto publication Eye Weekly. "Diablo Cody unleashes ‘Jennifer’s Body’ at TIFF.’"
The histrionics make sense, it seems, because Cody’s screenplays are predicated on embellishment. However, unlike "Juno" — the runaway success that premiered at TIFF in 2007 before winning an Oscar for the first-time screenwriter — "Jennifer’s Body" is also predicated on derivation.
The movie, which opened TIFF’s "Midnight Madness" section Thursday night, has plenty of great ideas but only succeeds as a trite imitation B-movie. It stars Megan Fox (shown left as she arrived to a news conference on Friday) as a slutty teenager kidnapped by a couple of satanic rockers and morphed into a demon.