Her - 7.5 / 10 (Just an FYI, my wife literally was disgusted by this movie; absolutely fucking hated it).
The film is really an odd assortment of things. The dialogue is.. well.. it's well written. But, it's not a screenplay. The prose is that of a book, and while Phoenix does a commendable job as the protagonist, I don't think he's capable of filling out the empty space by not having an actor to play against. There are often times throughout the film where you will go from relating to the character to suddenly checking your watch or phone because he's totally lost you. This is entirely the fault of Spike Jonze, who wrote and directed the movie.
The Operating System, Samantha that Theo falls in love with is very poorly written. She does not act like a real woman, but instead, more like how a man might perceive a woman. There is a total lack of depth in her script, and the plot progression that follows her evolution is both clever but a bit too obvious likely due to the short time between cause and effect. The audience is kind of just walking through these linear events, one by one, with a single character, Theo. The film feels like it needed something to break this up. Jonze tries to do this with flashbacks, but they are only brief interludes to present dialogue and nothing more. Overall, the story does not revolve around Samantha, and she is really only a foil for Theo to explore himself.
(very slight spoilers ahead)
Now, there's a couple of things about the movie that will put some people off. My wife, in particular, thought the movie was simply horrible. I can't stress that enough. She was bored throughout, and was offended by the somewhat forced "sex" scenes. I also thought that Theo having "phone sex" prior to installing Samantha was just too obvious, again, taking away any imaginative necessity from the viewer and reducing the story to cause and immediate effect. It's dull, in many parts.
There's also another sticky point here. If you pay close attention to this movie, you may come away with a sense that Jonze is telling a somewhat misogynistic story. I say that because the evils in Theo's world are all perpetrated by women.
There are five women in Theo's life mentioned during the film.
The first is his wife, but we later find out she is a very selfish person with some serious emotional baggage. It is implied she gained success, largely due to Theo, and then dumped him - and his name - the first chance she got.
The second mentioned is his mother, whom again, on first glance he says he has a warm relationship with; but, in the very next sentence he says she is distant and self-absorbed.
The third woman is his blind date, who is portrayed as a lush, a whore, desperate, and willing to "fuck" if it means she'll have a companion. Her final words on the screen are a reflection of herself... "creepy."
The fourth woman is Theo's best friend, who obviously has a good relationship with Theo, but is married. She ultimately breaks her husbands heart, and asks for a divorce. She says on several occasions that she is a bad person, but "fuck it."
The last woman is Samantha. The Operating System. We would think she would be different, but alas, she's the worst of them all. She treats him worse than any of the other women at the end of the movie (by her actions), and does the same thing that his wife ultimately did.
Therefore, throughout the movie, we see no women that are shown in a positive light -- we only see their flaws. Now all these flaws mentioned are some of the more common ways of how a woman could hurt a man, through her thoughts and through her actions. But we don't see any of Theo's flaws. He is without fault. He is portrayed as a great guy, and Jonze goes out of his way to project Theo onto a nameless character midway through the movie who is with a single-mom and her kids and "must be a great guy.""
This is a bit disingenuous and somewhat insulting to the viewer. It's something I would expect from Lars von Trier, but this was wrapped in a cute and fuzzy way; but I think it's the same overall message.
Lastly, it may be difficult to relate to the ending. It seems forced. From everything we know about Theo, the way he handled the end of his relationship was very out of character; in fact, it smacked of being totally unrealistic. What Samantha did to him was "insane," as he put it, but he wanted to avoid the issue and seemingly work past it. But when we look closer, it seems like Jonze is saying that a hopeless romantic is truly hopeless as there is no true love. People say things, and do things, but they can never truly give themselves to you, wholly and honestly. Personally, I think that's a crock of shit. I think most men who have ever felt love for a woman would probably agree -- they would die for her. But in Jonze's world, it doesn't seem like anyone feels that way about another person. Or at least, no woman feels that way about a man.
So in a sense, this movie isn't about finding love at all, it's about the impermanence of personal relationships. It also devalues the concept of love. Not in a bad way, I'm not passing judgement, I just think that's the real message here. That you can want and feel things that can just never be, and one of those things is the hope to possess another individual. There is deep philosophy behind this type of thinking, but if you are more of a traditionalist like myself, it will be hard to relate to and therefore makes the final act (which happens in like 15 minutes) difficult to accept.
Anyway, thought it was definitely worth watching. Again, 7.5 / 10. The message is deep, but the delivery is a bit clunky and expositional. Overall, I liked it though. But again, my wife fucking hated it.
