A Nice Idea that Failed

Rating: 1/10 (18 January 2014)

Big fail. A dystopia is where the author takes what we value today and projects it into the future... as a nightmare. That is, what we "like" becomes a nightmare. Spike Jonze wants something like that, but fails, since he probably doesn't know what dystopia is. Like many feminists, male and female (think Margaret Atwood), Jonze thinks he can take what he *hates* about his culture into the future and project that; that's neither utopia nor dystopia, it's just a rant. And no, I'm not talking about artificial intelligence, which is NOT what this film is about. I'm talking about how men and women actually think about each other.
The politics are crude. Jonze wants us to believe that a utopian Los Angeles will feature games that give housewives "mommie points," the way they might have in the 1950s. So, like, given the current evolution of women, there's a future for "mommie points," right? Similarly, the males in this film are caricatures, and mostly from the past. The "masculine" friend of the hero treats his wife condescendingly... as he might have in 1915. The other 'normal' male is a one-dimensional jerk. The women natter like girls from the 1960s -- the counter-culture -- or first-wave Feminism, 1978.
You could say that, having given the characters no navel, Jonze does nothing but observe his own. The result is a film so dazzled by its politics, and so ignorant of life, that it's sterile. There is no human growth here, just social theory, aphorisms about feelings, and received wisdoms.
This is not a film, it's a doodle about two improbable mates. The male hero's only virtue is that he's "half-woman," as the film takes great pains to say. For the rest of it, the man mutters aloud, and follows a hollow character line that turns him into cardboard.There was a way to make Jonze's central plot device work as a piece of art. I have some ideas on that. However, I'm not going to say it here: it would encourage Jonze to re-do this massive bore.