This isn't your average romantic film but it is a high-concept hipster romance that was finally made for the right time, right place.

Rating: 6/10 (15 January 2014)

"Guess what the "future" (in a relatively nearer sense) may hold for your love life? Know whether sticking out with the one you physically love or is better off or not than the one you become attached to via technology? Could the film be a metaphor for online dating, phone sex, or a propaganda piece for those two things?
Her, Spike Jonze's experimental and Charlie Brooker's Black Mirror- inspired romance, is a quiet, mild-mannered, and potentially thought- provoking look into how man and technology can correspond and have a relationship together in the face of adversity and loneliness.
It examines the look of a man named Theodore (played by a confident, not so smug Joaquin Phoenix), a vocal (seems keyboards are a thing of the past in the future) letter-writer, who evokes an eccentric hipster chic about him as he settles through a divorce with his wife only to find escapism and compatibility one moment and thereafter with an operating system (OS) named Samantha voiced by every Joe or Bob's favourite, Scarlett Johansson.
Her, as a whole, manages to be a neat and safe ride but it does have its lack of thrills when the film boils down more to a conventional romantic plot line than a sort-of satirical take on "phone love" and "technological obsession" (this is notable during the gaming sequences and one phone sex scene which has, undoubtedly, an offensive and disgusting joke involving three sexually deviant acts not appropriate to said on here) but that does not mean it is not realistic enough. The emotions and catharsis feels believable and far beyond the hokey cues one may find in a generic romance.
I liked what Jonze (who is known to be a "music video" director) did with the design and location by creating an environment not so futuristic and believable (even if Shanghai is mixed along with Los Angeles in several shots which is peculiar and non-projection screens with finger-oriented gaming and voice-automated smartphones are still in development) and what he did with the whole theme of the film by making it stand out from a wave of Oscar bait and romantic films that are usually filled with gushy tears and recycled plot lines found on Lifetime.
Romance is a tricky game of sorts as I usually abstain from getting into any kind of affair, kiss, or sexual encounter of sorts and this film's technology-oriented premise and peculiar characters (Phoenix and Johansson that is) stood out for me also knowing that I have seen things which deals with similar themes like Black Mirror, the Kate Bush music video Deeper Understanding, and some episodes of Dexter's Laboratory. The others here including Amy Adams and Rooney Mara provide well-rounded performances as the encounters Theodore explores especially during the scenes where Adams' character who is a filmmaker and video game designer tries to showcase her documentary about sleep and a quirky game which involves a mother trying to be "perfect." There are some believably funny scenes and none of it feels forced or too eccentric to where I may find the whole hipster chic of it (which Jonze's fan base mostly consists of) annoying and pretentious too much.
The Black Mirror connection is not explicit but a possible inspiration for the script and execution of the film as Black Mirror utilises technology within its everyday look at lifestyles or near-by futures or dystopias to show how over-the-top matters of life could get. The differences here is that Black Mirror allowed to explore several subjects as a TV series and its technology-gone-mad angle is a lot more darker and bleaker than Her.
If more and more people were more like Theodore, I think the problem of overpopulation, divorce rates, infidelity, domestic violence, negligence towards children and women, and other relative issues maybe diminished while the focus of these issues may pertain but on a less crucial and problematic level like now. My futuristic observations maybe controversial and wrong but I wish Jonze would deliver some of these questions more into the film but the film as a whole was not terrible but felt a bit stretched and exhaustive more than I could ask for but nonetheless, the realistic parameters and treatment of love, the idiosyncrasy, and occasional humour stood out and it was altogether a respectable but not phenomenal film like how most of the critics put it out.
Her is not science-fiction (in the same sense as something like THX 1138 which some of the set designs might be based off for this film), Bicentennial Man, or Close Encounters of the Third Kind) but its aims are a bit futuristic at the moment but may come across some point in time around in the 2020s?