Fell WAY short of expectations, and not appropriate for all agess

Rating: 6/10 (2 February 2014)

Joaquin Phoenix unfortunately committed career suicide several years ago, and after 5 or so years of consuming mass quantities of alcohol and illegal substances, and giving Hollywood the middle finger, it looked like he was ready to make nice and put his acting talent back to good use. Although I've enjoyed most of his past movies, I really didn't miss him much while he was gone, particularly since he did it all to himself. Still, when I saw the previews for this movie and what it was about, it looked intriguing and I thought it had a good premise that would make for a cute, offbeat romantic comedy of sorts. I decided to see it with my 24yo daughter, which quickly became a little awkward for both of us when JP started visually fantasizing about having sex with a near full-term pregnant woman, and another chick that got off by being beaten with a dead cat during sex. Oh yeah, and let's not forget his operating system (voice by Scarlett Johannson) that pondered what @n@l sex would look like. There was also a lot of gratuitous use of explicit words and imagery that just totally didn't fit in at all with the theme of the movie, but that's the least of the issues I had with it. The list just goes on and on. Cute romantic comedy suitable for watching with the entire family??? Not so much!!! It just dumbfounds me that anybody would think those things belong in a movie such as this, or at least the way the previews/trailers projected the movie to be. It was all as out of place as it would've been in something like Sleepless In Seattle. I'm hardly a prude by any measure, but none of that stuff had any place in this movie, and some of it had no place in almost any other movie I can think of, except perhaps the documentary that Casey Affleck made when Joaquin Phoenix decided to quit acting ("I'm Still Here"). Having your "friend" cr@p into your mouth while you're sleeping fits right in with some of the stuff that was in this movie. It really makes no sense, because the middle half of the movie is exactly what you'd expect it to be... a slightly zany, offbeat romantic comedy (though with very little comedy) about a guy that falls in love with his computer and his smart phone's operating system. Aside from the wildly inappropriate content earlier on in the movie, the ending was absolutely HORRIBLE. I won't give out any spoilers of course, but it was completely as if the writers just had NO IDEA of where to go with the story and how to wind it up!!! The ending was just totally nonsensical and empty! The sort of ending where you're watching a scene and you say to yourself "Don't EVEN tell me this is the end of the movie?!?!". My advice, DEFINITELY wait until it's out on DVD/Blu-Ray and spend $1 or $2 to rent it from Redbox or watch it on Netflix. I certainly wouldn't suggest anybody spend $20-$40+ to see it in theaters, and I definitely wouldn't recommend taking any children younger than mid teens to see it solely due to those few scenes. It's really too bad, because those scenes added NOTHING to the movie, weren't funny imho, and did nothing but take a movie that should've been appropriate for almost all ages, and make it completely inappropriate for children under 13-15.