Original, Realistic, Great Acting & Brilliantly Empathizes/Cares For All Of It's Characters!

Rating: 10/10 (20 January 2014)

I really loved this movie. It's difficult to put into words how this movie made me feel, but I love when a movie such as this brings out a certain emotion within me. It's as if an endorphin is released, which causes a mixture of sadness, yet I leave the movie with a sense of well- being and perhaps optimism. It's pretty much impossible to put into words , but some other movies off the top of my head, which trigger a similar emotion are, American Beauty, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind and Lost in Translation.
Going into this movie I had several assumptions neither negative nor positive, but my natural assumption was that Theodore (Joaquin Phoenix) was going to be this quirky guy who would pathetically (for lack of a better term) develop a relationship with his OS and the humor that would go with such a scenario, but that wasn't the case at all. In fact, Her is so Stellar that you completely empathizes with Theodore as to how and why he would develop a relationship with his OS, which as you can imagine, is not an easy feat. Everything had to fall into place just right and that's exactly what Spike Jonze, so brilliantly succeeds in doing.
The acting; Joaquin Phoenix, Scarlett Johansson, Amy Adams, Rooney Mara, Olivia Wilde etc, is superb and so is the dialog. All of the conversations felt real and genuine. I found it amusing how the characters would throw out f bombs in a natural context. In Spike Jonze's future reality I could do without the above waist pants, although I liked the portrayal of the male characters in reference to being comfortable around one another.they aren't afraid to touch or complement.
I would say that this movie probably captures the relationship process (breakups, sadness, growing, moving on etc.) better than any movie I've ever seen. This movie exposes the characters flaws without blaming anyone. For example, we find ourselves caring about Theodore's ex-wife Catherine as much as we care about him. We get to see Theodore grow as a person, particularly as a result of his relationship with Samantha (OS), but also from his friendship with Amy (Amy Adams) as well.
The director's decision to lead the viewer to believe that Theodore and Amy could potentially build a romantic relationship was the correct one, rather than taking us by the hand and visually introducing it to us, which would have been very corny.