HE'S JUST NOT THAT INTO YOU - ken kwapis - 0.1 / 10

Before even sitting down in the theater, I knew this was going to be bad. The signs were all there. Its release date had been pushed at least twice. The studio that made it sold it to another studio before distributing it (something you don't do if you think you have a decent product on your hands). And I'd seen the trailer so many times I could quote most of it (always a bad sign as it means they're trying to get everyone to see it opening day because they know word of mouth will be so awful that it'll soon kill the film). But even knowing it was going to be bad, I didn't expect it to be this bad, and outright offensive besides. He’s Just Not That Into You is one of the most offensive, most odious films I've ever seen, and certainly the most offensive film I've seen this past year (one that included cinematic gems such as Rachel Getting Married and Twilight).


The movie opens with a montage of women from around the world saying pretty much the same thing about men they're interested in; basically that the guy was going to call but he just lost the woman's number or, in one particularly terrible bit, ‘lost her hut number.’ Leaving aside the fact that the film co-opted a completely separate and unique culture to make this point, the point itself is ridiculously offensive. It makes these women (and the implication here is that all women everywhere are like this) pathetic. They sit around waiting for the guy to call them, wondering if he likes them. At no point, here or anywhere else in the film, are any of these women asked whether they liked the guy in question or not. The film is saying that it doesn't matter what the woman thinks about the guy, the important thing is that he likes her.

Then we get into the film proper and are introduced Ginnifer Goodwin's character. (Her name is actually Gigi but calling these characters by their names seems to be beside the point as they’re more or less archetypes (the one who wants to get married, the one whose husband is cheating, the one who can't get a guy to call her, the one who’s bewildered by the high tech world of modern dating, etc.).) She's just had a date and is convinced this guy will actually call her. The inference being that she's had encounters like this plenty of times before and the guys have never called.

She then spends the next week with the phone always by her side (open in yoga class, near her in the shower, etc.). It's pathetic, sad and so deeply off-putting that everything this character does for the rest of the film is colored by it. It doesn't matter how cute or charming she might later turn out to be, she’s established as pathetically desperate from the first minutes of the film and there's no going back.

I don't know what the filmmakers were hoping to accomplish with this character. I don’t know what it says about them that they thought Gigi was some kind of everywoman. I guess they wanted the women in the audience to understand her and think she was cute and adorable but a little lost. Or maybe they wanted people (gasp) to think, 'I've been there.' But right after the initial date was over, they cut to the guy Gigi was just on a date with calling someone else. The fact that he didn't even wait until he got to his car establishes him as such a dickhead that no one could possibly be wanting these two to get together. And if the audience doesn't want these two to get together then Gigi's waiting by the phone for the next week for this asshole to call her just reads as pathetic and sad and calls into question her sanity besides. The question of whether or not she even liked this guy to begin with is never raised.

And it just goes on like this for another interminable hour. Every woman in the film is hopelessly pining for the men in their lives to do something (marry them, be faithful to them, call them, etc.) None of them take charge, take control or have any say in what sort of romantic life they want to have. None, that is, except for Scarlett Johansson’s Anna who, despite knowing the man she’s attracted to is married, dates him anyway. Thus, the filmmakers behind this abomination seem to be saying that women should cater to men in all things romantic and those who don’t are evil little husband-stealing hussies.

As if to prove that point, the film punishes Anna's attempt to actually take some control of her own body and sexuality by forcing her to hide in a closet while the man she’s been sleeping with has sex with his wife just outside the door. The one woman in the film who actually took some control over her own sexuality and dared to try to date a man she liked has to suffer through one of the most embarrassing episodes in a film full of them.

But more than punishing Anna, this scene also reinforces just how terrible the men in He’s Just Not That Into You. Both sexes in this film are just awful human beings. Maybe they deserve each other. But the millions of women who went out to see this film last January deserve much much better.