Remember when indie movies really were? Before Robert Rodriguez, before Quentin Tarantino, before every major studio had an independent arm, like Fox Searchlight and Sony Classics. As hard as it may now be to believe, once upon a time, there really was such a thing as an independent movie.

Once in a while, we still get the out-of-nowhere picture, an OPEN WATER or GO FISH that actually is made without financing from a major studio, and is only picked up after the fact for distribution. These days, we do have a sort of in between life for a few filmmakers, like Kevin Smith, who made MALLRATS, CHASING AMY, and DOGMA. He operates with assistance from a studio, Miramax, owned by Disney, but, mainly because the budget is kept so low, is allowed to still operate as if Big Brother weren't looking over his shoulder.

Smith's out of nowhere first movie was CLERKS, and since then, he has kept to a basic production aesthetic of smaller, pictures, based on a signature banter, and populated by a recurring roundtable of celebs.

Jason Lee's off kilter romantic also-ran persona was put to good use in MALLRATS and CHASING AMY. He has since graduated to bigger movies, like VANILLA SKY, while bigger celebrity Ben Affleck has made a point to continue working on the lower profile Smith comedies, a partnership that began with CHASING AMY, and followed into the religious exploration of DOGMA, and, finally, to JERSEY GIRL, released on DVD and video September 7th.

JERSEY GIRL got an awful lot of attention for such a little movie, and that can also be credited to Affleck. Unfortunately, the attention focused on the fact that Jennifer Lopez had a small role (Affleck's wife, who dies in childbirth at the beginning of the film). After the disaster of GIGLI, JERSEY GIRL (even postponed several months) never had a chance. And, that's a shame. Let's face it, J Lo dies, and isn't that worth the price of admission?

Once again, Smith invests his movie with characters who talk just like real people (some of the time), and clearly matter to the filmmaker. He likes these people, so you can't help but feel the same.

Is the story of an out of work PR man forced into servitude to his daughter as a New Jersey municipal worker likely, believable, or fresh? No, not really, nope. Doesn't matter. Smith's commitment to his own wife and their child ­ his self-professed inspiration for this movie - is evident on every frame. Is the late at night confession from Affleck to his daughter hackneyed smarm? Sure. You take the good with the bad in a Smith movie.

Always wildly uneven, the moments of freshness are easily worth all the rest. Here, Affleck's daughter doesn't want to sing from "Cats" at her school show, as every other child does, but, instead from "Sweeny Todd", Stephen Sondheim's operatic cruelty about vengeful cannibalism. The whole family gets in on the act, including George Carlin, as Affleck's sensible dad, and effervescent, underrated Liv Tyler as his new gal pal, a straightforward sex researcher. Only in the movies.

First the montage of kids doing "Memory", then "Sweeney Todd" at a school show. The theatre queen crowd is already at Blockbuster.