If this is the future then god have mercy on us all

Rating: 5/10 (25 August 2014)

(50%) Dear god, what a depressing, bleak, piteous film. This really is the most joyless, unheartfelt "romantic" movies that I think I've ever sat through. The plot follows lonely, newly divorced, off-the-shelf love letter writer for people too lazy/clueless to write their own (is your heart broken yet) who creates a relationship with a bundle of hardware which essentially amounts to a series of long winded, and in some cases very awkward conversations with a dubbed-in Scarlett Johansson. I found almost everything just way too damn pitiful and sad to be moved by anything that unfolded. What really broke the back of this for me though is a scene in which an attractive young woman accepts a request solely from "Samantha" to have sex with her human "boyfriend", a man that the woman in question has never once met. So she arrives at a unknown man's apartment, alone of course, safe in the knowledge that everything is OK because an operating service could never be used as an evil ploy to fool someone directly into a rape/murder/mugging based trap. And I'm sorry, but even for a sci-fi movie this bends the limits of reality a little too far. Either that or the woman is mentally ill, has a death wish, or is just very stupid. I also hated the almost sacred manner in which people treated the computer/human relationships, as most people don't even treat normal human ones with as much caution. This though truth be told is a well made movie, the acting is fine, and the writing is sharp. But it still really didn't hit the target for me at all, mainly because I couldn't relate/care about the relationship, or even believe in it, and that's so very important for a movie such as this. And any fans out there: next time you watch this remember that every time Samantha spoke it came not from the lovely Scarlett Johnansson, but a dark basement in silicon valley over-listened - if not actually created by a fat nerd picking wax out of his ears. That's all I could picture throughout and it made me feel sick. This for me is one of the biggest disappointments of the year so far, and that's a crying shame for a movie that I had high hopes on being great and actually enjoying.