Movies: The Trial of Ben Affable

Affable. That's the best and worst to be said for Jersey Girl. What's unusual about the film is how normal it is--not for today but for the '40s (A Tree Grows in Brooklyn) or the early '60s (The Courtship of Eddie's Father), when Hollywood doled out sweet stories of sturdy kids who play matchmaker for an ornery widowed parent.

Affleck's comfortable presence in the very retro Jersey Girl hints at an anomaly. He is a movie star but of an earlier era. With his tall, dark and conventionally handsome looks, his easy charm, his knack for playing flustered and then playing it down, he could fit smoothly into a Preston Sturges farce or Dashiell Hammett mystery.

The bad news is, that Golden Age is dead. The good news: Affleck is just 31 and, with a few smart movie choices, can have a long career. He's got plenty of time. Humphrey Bogart didn't get his first defining film role, in Hammett's The Maltese Falcon, until he was 41. --With reporting by Desa Philadephia/Los Angeles