Her (watched 5/18/14)
I know. I know. This movie doesn’t belong on this blog. And please believe me when I say I’m not the voice of dissent for the sake of dissenting, but I felt like somebody needed to be the big warning sticker on this movie that said “Save yourself 2 hours”. Right now it has an 8.2 rating on IMDB. For me that’s something akin to driving down the interstate where you see a nasty accident and miles of cars stopped in anticipation of moving again. A little further down the road you see cars moving freely about to get lodged in the epic traffic jam that is Her. I was moving freely at 8:00. I got my life back at 10:00.
It started off with a tremendous amount of promise like most trips into the Adirondacks on a 4th of July weekend, but about 20 minutes in it became an epic mess of relationship awkwardness. The last line I remember enjoying was “choke me with the dead cat”. After that, I felt like I was a voyeur on the sad pathetic potential of our digitally interwoven future. It’s an excellent premise, and the Director of Photography contributed some pristine moments which question our relationship with these digital devices we carry around, but the medium was ultimately tried, tired, and laughable for it’s didactically trite metaphors.
Looking at Ted, which you do a lot of.
I’m biased. I watch a lot of crap. My wife loves the romantic flicks though. She’s a real sucker for them. In fact in the realm of Venn diagrams our movie overlap is very, very, very, very tiny. So small we tend to agree on parts of movies instead of the whole thing. That said, most movies we watch fall into one of our categories of appreciation. Her failed both of us. We’re not the be all end all, but it’s a pretty big fucking achievement.
I know few people will ever stumble across this post, and fewer still will heed the warning. Regardless here’s some advice on how to prepare yourself:
1) Set the expectation bar to low.
2) Imagine the movie is renamed Watching Ted Twombly’s Face
3) Make lot’s of snacks, bring a book, possibly a video game (whatever kept you company in those quiet awkward moments after your parents got into an argument, that’s pretty much how you’ll spend an hour of the film).
4) Once Scarlett Johansson starts talking (and it hurts to say this), bump it up to 3x speed. She does a fine job, but the “Best Original Screenplay” suggests there were a TON of remakes last year…
Be your own judge (really don’t, just skip the damn thing) but for me it was:
2/5 elevator rides
What it has: Swearing animated figures, boiling tea kettle, ear buds, 100 minutes of awkwardness, dynamic facial gestures by Joaquin Phoenix, an excellent aesthetic sense, weird pants, and a whole new realm of ChatRoulette
What it’s missing: Anything that wasn’t covered in Say Anything, litter, poor folks, body on body intercourse
Brains, Blood, Boomsticks, & Broods 
Leave a comment