He's Just Not That Into You

I am a fan of romantic comedies.

Much like some young men who fancy films with superheroes, explosions and bright lights, as I still do, I also have an affinity for well-crafted films that try and contain the very thing that drives almost every person whether they want to be cognizant of it or not: love.

It’s a rough thing to try and be faithful to the feeling we get when we meet someone, are pursuing someone and what’s it’s like to finally be with that someone but there are those who are able to get it right. Look at Cameron Crowe’s SINGLES, a movie that melded humor with the suffering tribulations of a pack of people who just want love and to be loved. It’s still a benchmark I judge a lot of other films by when a movie wants to go down that road of mainstream treatise on the commonality of love. SAY ANYTHING, as well, shows how adept he was in taking a lot of that comedy out and laying bare the quietness of people looking to find something special.

The problem with Ken Kwapis’ HE’S JUST NOT THAT INTO YOU, then, isn’t that there is a lack of understanding of why this genre exists it is the not so great material, the execution of said material and its shallowness/one-sidedness of most the cast that ensures this will not be allowed into the pantheon of good romantic comedies. And, as an aside, this film shares more with tragedy than it does hilarity so if you’re wondering whether there will be yuks and chuckles peppered throughout this film you will be sadly and horrifically surprised at the infidelity, cheating, lying, mean spiritedness and overall dour sheen of the film.

For those unfamiliar with the plot here is the official synopsis: An all-star cast is featured in the stories of a group of interconnected, Baltimore-based twenty- and thirtysomethings as they navigate their various relationships from the shallow end of the dating pool through the deep, murky waters of married life. Trying to read the signs of the opposite sex, each hopes to be the exception to the “no exceptions” rule.

One of the first problems with the film, from its printed promotion to its trailer, is that it’s trying to sell you on the idea that this is going to be an amusing romp into some soft territory. What I take issue with is that this movie is confused. It doesn’t know what it wants to be. Apart from Ken’s serviceable directing is his ineffectualness in getting anything compelling out of this material or its players. To put it in terms many would be able and understand this movie reads like a Robert Altman feature without the depth of its characters and feels like a bad Thirtysomething episode, its players looking fresh off the runways of Milan and completely unbelievable as forlorn romantics. What’s more is that the movie tries to shoehorn short scenes with actors who have nothing to do with the film’s content to try and talk amusingly about the pitfalls of love gone bad. These mini “interviews” feel disingenuous when you try and marry them to the movie’s overall story.
And the stories! This movie spins yarns on top of sticks like plates, trying to keep them all going, and here is a run down of what each has to do with the other:

Jennifer Connelly: Your everywoman. She seems nice enough in her role as a wife who is in the middle of renovating her home (metaphor alert!) but is having issues with her lying husband.

Bradley Cooper: Connelly’s lying, cheating husband. He wants to get it on like Donkey Kong with Scarlett Johansson, an aspiring singer (thankfully, we’re not abused with her vocal talents) who pursues Bradley even after she realizes he’s married and is shocked and dejected when he doesn’t leave his wife for her.

Scarlett Johansson: She plays a shallow tramp of a woman. She’s leading Kevin Connelly on as a sorta, kinda girlfriend.

Kevin Connelly: Perhaps one of the best things about the film. He’s a guy just looking to make his way through life, trying to balance his professional and personal life. Goes on a date with Ginnifer Goodwin and doesn’t call her.

Ginnifer Goodwin: The emotional tractor beam of low self-esteem in this movie. She depends on other people for her happiness for 90% of this movie and only, by the end, does she realize only she can make her own happiness. What a shock.

Justin Long: Friend of both Kevin and personal mentor to Ginnifer of all the ways men like to treat women badly. If you’ve ever seen a film like this you’ll know how this will end and it does it miserably.

Jennifer Aniston: Common law girlfriend to Ben Affleck of 7 years and conveniently decides in a timely fashion that, no, even though the two of them agreed not to get married ever, she does want to get married. She dumps him.

Ben Affleck: A man who starts out being confident and emotionally stable ends up neutered by the end. That’s all you need to know.

Drew Barrymore: A vortex of pathetic. From using MySpace to get a date (you can tell by this how old the film has been sitting on the shelf by how much this site gets mentioned. I’m surprised no one name drops Pets.com) to being a genuinely bad at gaging how regular people are supposed to fall in love.

As you read the above I can tell you that this represents the major problem I had with this film: these characters are not believable, single-sided and they’re wickedly miserable. If I wanted misery I would just look at the relationships of people around me; I don’t go to the films to be reminded of the misery that real life doles out in ladles on a daily basis. The movie plods along, weighed down by its own moroseness, and once it thinks it wants to end things it can’t do it without seeming incredibly disingenuous.

I can’t give away how all of this plays out but this is honestly a sad film. I can’t lay too much blame at Ken’s feet for a middling movie but the screenwriters managed to miss or intentionally ignore the reason why there could have been a great opportunity to make a movie where there was genuine comedy and genuine heartache. As it stands, this film wants to tell a couple of handfuls’ worth of stories and can’t keep them all going.