"Her" teeters on the edge...and just about pulls it off.

Rating: 7/10 (18 January 2014)

The story of a recently separated man living in L.A. about 20 or 30 years in the future, who falls in love with his Computer Operating system ("Samantha"), "Her" definitely teeters on the edge. If you accept the conceit of this kind of love being possible, then you accept what the film offers. If not, then you spend the rest of the movie fighting it (or maybe you walk out or shut it off). In my case, I fought it, at least gently, with my own prejudices and opinions about a society that has become too dependent upon technology—married to our gadgets and I-phones. Then I thoughtwell, why wouldn't falling in love with an operating system be the next step? Why wouldn't a society that spends much of its time in public immersed in a private world of technology ultimately wind up in a relationship with such a device? Given that logic, I was forced to accept the plausibility of the premise of the plotwhich went somewhere maybe a little too sad and maybe wound up somewhere you might not expect.
The movie left me thinking, so in one respect, the film must have worked. I can't say that I loved it, I also don't imagine myself having repeat viewings. But if anyone other than Spike Jonze had made this, it could have been unwatchable. (I shudder to re-imagine this film with, say, Adam Sandler) But Joaquin Phoenix, Amy Adams, and Scarlet Johansson (as the voice of Samantha) are all terrific, and Her just about pulls it off.