Great Acting/ Promising Story of Unrealistic Expectations Misfires

Rating: 5/10 (19 January 2014)

The film written by, directed by and starring Joseph Gordon-Levitt does a really fine job for his writing and directorial debut, but he may have missed a great opportunity to tackle the subject of pornography and how many members of society can be on either end of the spectrum as either worshiping it or demonizing it. The acting by Gordon-Levitt and his supporting cast was great, although the over the top New England accents were a little too much for me. Johansson's character was absolutely obnoxious, in the "chewing her gum while talking in New England accent" kind of way. I'm sure that was the overall goal for her character, being obnoxiously uptight, but I believe it could have been achieved without the "talking with gum and overdone accent" bit. Gordon-Levitt's script surely leaves something to be desired. His character has no trouble with luring women to bed. It wasn't done in a very comedic way, but more of a repetitive loop of brief jump-cuts of dancing in a club, leading to taking the girl home, then a short clip of them in bed.
As they lay in bed, his inner dialogue explains that he feels he has never had the ability to interact with women on a human level. He repeatedly expresses his disdain for romance and his preference of pornography over intercourse. Johansson is the exact opposite, and has expectations that love meet the criteria that she develops in her mind based off Hollywood's over exaggerated romance stories. This story of two opposite minded people had promise, especially with such great actors. But it's brought to an incredibly unsatisfying halt, as they part ways, not once but twice, simply because his character realizes that his expectations of love and sex were too one-sided, while her character does not admit the same to her own flawed expectations. I think a much better resolution to the story could have been found if he could have shown her the light, and helped her come to the realization that her expectations from the romances she sees on screen were as selfish as his expectations of sex from pornography.
Instead we are left with him finding a more mature woman who teaches him that pornography is not worth demonizing, but equally not worth watching obsessively. This ending bothered me because as obnoxiously self- centered as Johansson's character was, she gave no indication that she was a lost cause. She was merely overly stubborn. She was still human enough to be worth trying a little bit harder to show that he had changed his ways and no longer addicted to pornography. All he needed was to reach compromise with her and eventually have her change her unrealistic expectations of a one-sided love where the man gives everything to the woman and ignores her imperfections pretending she is flawless. Instead he settles for the more mature woman, and just gives up trying to help his ex-girlfriend mature away from her spoiled rotten unrealistic expectations as if she is a lost cause.