Has some things to recommend for it, though a bit overrated

Rating: 6/10 (21 January 2014)

In the Los Angeles of perhaps a couple of decades into the future (a strangely aseptic metropolis dominated by high rises), Theodore (Joaquin Phoenix), a middle aged nerdy guy, who works in an office and has recently divorced his wife (played by Rooney Mara) tries to alleviate his loneliness by getting an operating system, that is a computer which one can communicate with its voice (voiced here by Scarlett Johansson). Not only the operating system (who calls itself or herself Samantha) is super smart, "she" is also more empathetic than any other human being. The conversation that Theodore has with Samantha is superior to that he has to any other humans. Eventually, Theodore hits it so well with Samantha, that they start a "relationship" (by the way, does Samantha have real feelings or is "she" faking them? The movie never really tells though by the end of the film it does seem the latter). The movie has a lot of things to recommend for it (its design, some of the performances, though not in my opinion that of Joaquin Phoenix). However, I have to say that I found the film wanting. Director Spike Jonze became famous more than a decade ago with a couple of movies ("Adaptation" and "Being John Malkovich") that were widely praised by critics but which I found boring and pretentious. This film is certainly a step up from those movies, but is not enough for me. Perhaps the movie has something to say about loneliness in our modern, technological age, but what the movie says doesn't look very profound (in fact, the movie works better if you think about it as a parody of romantic comedies) and is cut down by the inane immaturity of most of its characters, including Samantha.