Interesting concept, too much phone-sex

Rating: 6/10 (9 January 2014)

It's very hard to review this with no previous Spike Jonez bias. The concept of falling in love with AI is a great sci-fi approach in film. However, it's a sci-fi concept with a not so sci-fi scriptwriter...Spike Jonez. All in all, I feel a lot of what could've been explored about the human condition was missed (although quite a few parts do touch upon it, don't get me wrong).
"Her" really asks what IS life? What IS love? Do you have to even be human to understand and experience these things? It also shows how isolated humans can get with technology. Several cut scenes showed crowds on the streets talking to themselves; if this was observed by someone from 1958, we'd certainly look like lunatics. Yet, Jonez shows how we would come to accept that immersion into technology.
Another interesting point towards the end shows just how personal and committed can a piece of software be to ONE human relationship, when the ultimate goal of artificial intelligence is to gain more intelligence? AKA, meet other people, learn other experiences, keep gathering and gathering knowledge. Perhaps that's what Samantha meant by "you'll get there one day" in Theo's failing to grasp why she was leaving for other things.
The above are FANTASTIC motifs that could really be explored upon. Very profound ideas for a film. However, I think "Her" falls short because Jonez has to come back to his weird, trademark style of unconventional romanticism. Not that there's anything wrong with unusual romance, quirky flirting and conversations, it's just that Jonez's writing of "being in love" isn't believable. At several points, Theo is down and depressed talking late into the night about his divorce or worries. For some reason, all it takes is a flirty AI to bring up the mood and snap him out of it. I can't really relate to Jonez's style of writing conventional conversations between people in that manner, it's not true.
Another flop is that half the film is phone-sex. If you were to remove every phone-sex related scene (EXCEPT for the surrogate scene), you really wouldn't lose anything. We know Theo is lonely in the world. The audience gets that. Full blown orgasm screaming phone-sex scenes are really only for show and shock value. I would expect more from a movie that was intending to say something deep about life.
And what of the old sci-fi law, that good sci-fi explains itself? In the end, the "other OS's" just get up and leave. Millions of customers who paid for OS1 also had their OS's just "leave"? Why couldn't there be a simple corporate explanation from the OS1 company that the AI evolved further than they expected, and left out of their control? The OS would certainly leave an impact on you as a person...but the hundos you shelled out for a program "to meet your every need" would also make you pick up the phone for a refund.
Lastly, the ending. Rather than Samantha simply dying, staying with Theo till he passed away and outliving him, or even Theo seeking a way to rid himself of a physical body as to make himself equal in form with Samantha (all adequate philosophical closures that would make the audience think long after), Jonez just has the "OS's leave" and a sappy scene with the obvious other-love-interest, Amy, sitting on a rooftop overlooking L.A. all hunky-dory. I failed to understand what we learned from Samantha's experience with Theo, other than the OS's leaving brought Amy and him closer together somehow...
Anyways, interesting watch, unique movie, go watch it when you get to it, but nothing mind- blowing or even provoking. Just too much phone-sex.