I'm Just Not Into 'He's Just Not That Into You'
Written: Feb 28 '09
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Product Rating:
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Pros: great cast, a couple of funny moments
Cons: forced chemistry, lack of continuity, dark for a "romantic comedy", a negative look at relationships
The Bottom Line: The problem with this film is that it takes itself too seriously, and tries to be ground-breaking by not actually breaking any ground. Not really recommended.
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| three_ster's Full Review: He's Just Not That Into You |
He’s Just Not That Into You is a theatrical release based on a book of the same name that seeks to give insight into relationships and unfortunately uses a lot of stereotypes in order to get that message across. This was intended to be one of the Valentine’s Day type films for 2009, and advertising was intended to draw both a male and female audience, but being a man that went to see this film with my wife, I have to say that it did a poor job of crossing over the gender-lines to make itself capable of entertaining all viewers. That is not to say that the film was horrible, but it didn’t keep my attention as much as I would have hoped.
At the center of the film is the story that or maybe hope, that everyone out there has someone waiting for them, and that they just need to work at finding them. Perhaps that isn’t the intended message of the film, but at the end of the film, there are a lot of questions about why it was supposed to be entertaining, and whether it actually stayed close enough to the source material to make fans of the book happy with the film. In order to try and make it as interesting as possible, they brought in what can be described as an all-star cast, but rather than presenting itself as a love story, the films comes off more as a “don’t do this if you want to be happy in your relationship.”
You can say that the star of the film is Ginnifer Goodwin, who also poses as the narrator at different intervals, giving us a rundown of what girls are taught early on in life, and the assumption that if a guy is mean or does something unkind that it is just because he likes the girl so much. This lack of expression can also be used as an analogy to describe the film, as there was far too much “forced chemistry” in the story, while it tries to show different facets of relationships from finding someone, to making a relationship work, to having a marriage survive trouble.
In other roles Jennifer Aniston, Justin Long, Jennifer Connelly, Kevin Connolly, Scarlett Johansson, Ben Affleck, and Bradley Cooper all have their own parts, probably so that the interlocking stories are able to be discerned from each other. They all hold the attention of a particular scene, and even Drew Barrymore makes an appearance in an interesting role later. The problem is that nobody commands the film, and it ends up just being a somewhat depressing look at the ins and outs of relationships, and fails to really tie itself together in the end. It’s a tough film to recommend, as it was watchable, but I wouldn’t go as far as saying that I enjoyed it. I can see how some women might like it a lot, but I just didn’t.
*Lean and Mean Review
Recommended:
No
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