Romance and sci-fi, pulled off quite competent

Rating: Null/10 (26 December 2017)

Spoilers ahead, matey.
In an age were people are carrying around their smartphones and ask their digital assistants anything, where they outfit their homes with Amazon Alexas, this movie felt highly relevant. (I wonder if I'll look back at this review in a couple of years and possibly think how dated it is by then.)
The problem is that this movie feels partially very real already (I'm writing this is 2017). I'm thinking of the scene where we learn that he is professionally composing personal "handwritten" letters for other people. By dictating them to his computer and printing them. It seems really touching and personal, but it's manufactured and impersonal. A symbol for this age where technology is bringing us together yet driving us kind of apart.
But still you have to suspend disbelief a bit for this movie to work. Because machines, operating systems, artificial intelligence is just not there in the way the movie shows... yet. The operating system feels basically like a human off screen. That is because of the dialogue, and due to Johannson's alluring voice-acting. At first I found it a bit offputting that she sounded too human, like he is talking to a woman over the phone. But after a while she becomes really likable, a great listener with a great sense of humor. That's kind of the point of this movie.
But they go a bit too far in a few places. When he's having cyber sex with her and she is moaning like she's having an orgasm? When he finds out that his operating system is polyamorous and has been cheating on him? Come on, tell me you don't find it a bit funny when reading this. Apart from that, execution of the movie is really great. It's mostly a melancholic coming-of-age film, maybe a bit too long and sobby in parts for my taste.
Also, I would have expected that it felt a bit creepier to him that he's interacting with this artificially intelligent digital being and falling in love with it. (Ex Machina pulled this balance between attraction and doubt off better.) This leads me to the conclusion that the movie wanted to be more feel-good romance and less science fiction. But maybe we have seen that before, whereas we have no seen a movie like this before.
It's original, and it's pulled off quite well. In the hands of an incompetent director this premise of "guy falls in love with his computer" might have become a terrible farce.