Bland as elevator music

Rating: 2/10 (31 January 2014)

Billy Bob Thornton recently said that cable TV series are now better than the movies coming out these days, and "Her" is a perfect example. I was thinking as I watched -- all that money, all that hype, and I'd rather be watching a rerun of Six Feet Under.
The script was carefully controlled to maintain a tone of predictable blandness and Joaquin Phoenix amazingly cooperated 100% with that intent, never showing a sign of actual flames behind the smoke, or a spark that could ignite an unexpected or even interesting dimension to his character. Scarlett Johansson's perky/wistful voice also contributed to the sense that this was in fact a Disney movie hardly gone off the rails. If the studios cannot turn out something that can hope to compete with the tight scripts, emotional impact, character development and pure entertainment value of TV cable series, is it any wonder that paying good money to see a movie in a theater is becoming as obsolete as square dancing?