Difficult to rate

Rating: 6/10 (31 December 2013)

First of all, I want to list the positives in this movie, because there are several. The concept of falling in love with an AI is a great one. The cinematography and use of color in "Her" is really beautiful. The acting is uniformly good. Particularly Amy Adams, who plays an understated role as a nerdy girl next door who may have feelings for Theodore; despite a relatively quiet part, she completely inhabits Amy, making her feel like an actual person. Joaquin Phoenix does a great job (as usual) with Theodore, and Scarlett Johanson makes you believe she really is a computer with a heart. But I wanted to highlight Adams's performance; especially alongside her much larger role in American Hustle, she deserves a few big wins this year.
That being said... I have to admit it, I got a little bored watching this movie. If you forget that Samantha is a computer and think of her as a human being, which is easy to do, this movie is basically a series of relationship conversations between Joaquin Phoenix and a camera phone. The pace is surprisingly slow, and since the "girl" has no body, it's difficult to visually show their relationship. You have the requisite "quirky" scenes with Phoenix running through the subway, playing a ukulele, sitting on the beach fully clothed. The rest of the movie is basically talking. Samantha expresses lots of deep ideas about being a computer, but they are never visualized. This can work to great effect -- the scene when Theodore and Samantha "make love" to a totally black screen is the most brilliant one in the movie, even if it goes a little over the top. But you feel like Jonze missed a lot of chances to show us what the characters are saying about love, and life, rather than just have them tell us via voice-over. It broke a golden rule: "show, don't tell". The plot never really moves, and the concept starts to lose steam. There's a totally unnecessary video game subplot that I won't even bother to go into. The movie's observations about love and life were fairly obvious, as well, even veering into sappy. I hate having to write that, because I felt like the movie's heart was in the right place, and it had so much potential. But it just wasn't as interesting as I had hoped.
There is a lot to like about "Her", and despite its flaws, I would still recommend it as one of the better movies of the year. I just think it could have been a lot more than what it is.