Sorry but I Just Couldn't Connect With It

Rating: Null/10 (15 January 2014)

Her (2013)
** (out of 4)
Spike Jones' futuristic love story about a lonely man (Joaquin Phoenix) going through a divorce who falls in love with a computer system (voiced by Scarlett Johansson). HER is being considered by many to be one of the greatest films of 2013 and one of the best love stories in recent years. I really wish I could feel the same because while I respect what Jones was going for, for the life of me I couldn't help but feel this really wasn't any different than the countless other bad love stories out there. I really, really tried to enjoy this film more than I did but in the end I just found it to be way too predictable, pretentious and boring. I will start off with the biggest problem and that's the Samantha character, which of course is the computer system. So let me get this straight. This system is supposed to be super intelligent yet in reality she's just as stupid as any other female character in a bad romance because who with any intelligence would fall for someone like Phoenix? I mean, he's really just a depressed man with some serious mental issues. Shouldn't this intelligent system have picked up on this? There wasn't a single second of this film that I actually connected with and there certainly wasn't any emotional connection to the Samantha character. The sex scenes? Just didn't work. The weird double date? Nah, didn't work. How about the "other" woman who is brought in for the sex? None of it worked for me. Again, I respect what Jones was trying to do but in the end I thought the screenplay was rather hollow. Phoenix is one of my favorite actors and I thought he offered up another great performance. I certainly believed him as this character and he certainly made me think that someone like this could fall for a computer. Amy Adams and Rooney Mara are both good but I must say I didn't think either one had a very good role. As for Johansson, I thought she did an extremely good job with the vocal work and managed to bring some real emotion to the voice but was it really any better than some of the stuff we see in animated movies? Obviously, if you can connect with the man-computer story then I'm sure you're going to enjoy this much more. The film has some wonderful cinematography and the score is great but there just wasn't anything here for me to really connect to.