'Jersey Girl' sweet enough

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A cathartic moment comes early in "Jersey Girl": Jennifer Lopez dies. The recovering

queen of overexposure has an introductory role in this, writer/director Kevin Smith's serio-comic reflection on two generations of fatherhood: his own, and that of his recently deceased father.

Inspired by watching his wife stoke the home fires, Mr. Smith, he of geek-out favorites such as "Clerks" and wannabe shockers such as "Chasing Amy" and "Dogma," wrote tame "Jersey Girl" after contemplating what life would be like if he were forced to raise their daughter alone.

He didn't bargain for last year's Ben-Jen circus, which, mercifully, does not infect "Jersey Girl."

A delivery-room aneurysm summons Miss Lopez's Gertrude to the stage wings, leaving ex-hubby-to-be Ben Affleck the job of exorcising the demons of "Gigli."

Largely, he succeeds, as does "Jersey Girl," a romantic comedy that's shot through with contrivances and cushy manipulations but nonetheless has its heart in the right place.

In a reverse angle on one of the culture's favorite martyr figures, the single mom, Mr. Smith puts Ollie in the crucible of single fatherhood. With Gertrude gone, Mr. Affleck's Ollie Trinke, a slightly shallow ManhattanPR flack, must raise baby Gertie on his own.

He folds quickly. Ollie's father, public-works grunt Bart (going-through-the-gruff-motions George Carlin), takes the devastated family into his Highlands, N.J., home but refuses to let Ollie fob off fatherhood on granddad.

Useless at diaper changing and other grimy chores -- the daily commute under the Hudson is presumably another drag -- Ollie blows his stack during a press conference to introduce an up-and-coming actor/rapper, one Will Smith.

Ollie is sacked and ostracized, we're asked to believe, by the same music publicity industry that has welcomed Lizzie Grubman back to the fold. (Ollie's outburst is so legendary that, years later, he's laughed out of a job interview.)