list http://www.spout.com/ Recent community activity around He's Just Not That Into You on Spout Copyright 2005-9 Spout, LLC Spout RSS http://www.spout.com/images/SpoutLogoRSS.jpg http://www.spout.com/ 136 30 http://www.spout.com/films/He_s_Just_Not_That_Into_You/321645/default.aspx Title: He's Just Not That Into You
Year: 2009
Director: Ken Kwapis
Plot: Screenwriters Abby Kohn and Marc Silverstein team to adapt writing duo Greg Behrendt and Liz Tuccillo's best-selling book concerning the ever-widening gap between genders and the misunderstandings that often arise between couples. In the film, a woman who can't seem to get a grip on the men in her life pursues an advice columnist who never quite knew what he wanted in a relationship. Prolific television director Ken Kwapis (Freaks and Geeks and The Office) helms a romantic comedy produced by and starring Drew Barrymore. The ensemble also includes Jennifer Connelly, Scarlett Johansson, Jennifer Aniston, Ben Affleck, Justin Long, and Ginnifer Goodwin. ~ Jason Buchanan, All Movie Guide
Times Tagged: 58
Number of Lists: 4
Number of blog posts: 13
Number of discussion threads: 3
SpoutRating: 3
]]>Sat, 06 Jun 2009 20:36:33 GMTHe's Just Not That Into You2009Ken KwapisScreenwriters Abby Kohn and Marc Silverstein team to adapt writing duo Greg Behrendt and Liz Tuccillo's best-selling book concerning the ever-widening gap between genders and the misunderstandings that often arise between couples. In the film, a woman who can't seem to get a grip on the men in her life pursues an advice columnist who never quite knew what he wanted in a relationship. Prolific television director <a href="http://www.spout.com/players/P____98351/default.aspx" style='text-decoration:underline'>Ken Kwapis</a> (<a href="http://www.spout.com/films/240558/detail.aspx" style='text-decoration:underline'>Freaks and Geeks</a> and <a href="http://www.spout.com/films/96389/detail.aspx" style='text-decoration:underline'>The Office</a>) helms a romantic comedy produced by and starring <a href="http://www.spout.com/players/P_____4289/default.aspx" style='text-decoration:underline'>Drew Barrymore</a>. The ensemble also includes <a href="http://www.spout.com/players/P____14510/default.aspx" style='text-decoration:underline'>Jennifer Connelly</a>, <a href="http://www.spout.com/players/P___200222/default.aspx" style='text-decoration:underline'>Scarlett Johansson</a>, <a href="http://www.spout.com/players/P_____1831/default.aspx" style='text-decoration:underline'>Jennifer Aniston</a>, <a href="http://www.spout.com/players/P______426/default.aspx" style='text-decoration:underline'>Ben Affleck</a>, <a href="http://www.spout.com/players/P___274580/default.aspx" style='text-decoration:underline'>Justin Long</a>, and <a href="http://www.spout.com/players/P___341797/default.aspx" style='text-decoration:underline'>Ginnifer Goodwin</a>. ~ Jason Buchanan, All Movie Guide58Tag Target (>10)41333http://www.spout.com/ProductImages/s321645.jpghttp://www.spout.com/films/He_s_Just_Not_That_Into_You/321645/default.aspxFilm http://www.spout.com/blogs/dibot/archive/2009/3/29/41332.aspx Post By: dibot
Post To: dibot Blog
Post Date: 3/29/2009 10:26:08 PM
Body: I freaking love Newsies and I don't care who knows it. The love may stem from the fact that I saw it first when I was younger, but it may just be Christian Bale ("The Dark Knight") singing and dancing about. Inspired by actual events, the story follows a group of newsboys as they go on strike when Joseph Pulitzer raises the price of the newspaper. It's still a lot of fun, but some of the choreography is meh and the film is, of course, cheesy. It's Disney after all. But I still love it.I just got bored watching He's Just Not That Into You. There's no reason for this thing to be 2 1/2 hours long, unless it's trying to live up to the length of the title. A bunch of lessons on relationships, which we should really know already. Though the cast is filled with big names, I enjoyed Justin Long ("Zack and Miri Make a Porno") the most. But he's kind of my favorite actor right now. Maybe watch this when it comes on cable.Vicky Cristina Barcelona seems like a return to form for writer/director Woody Allen ("Cassandra's Dream"). Two Americans go to Barcelona and get involved with a painter. Then his ex-wife, Penelope Cruz ("Elegy"), turns up to add even more spice to the situation. Cruz just blows up the screen every time she's on, totally deserving her Oscar. She's the best part of the movie. The worst part is the voice-over. But all in all, enjoyable.Anne Hathaway ("Get Smart") gives an Oscar nominated performance (I'm still catching up on my reviews) in Rachel Getting Married, and she's very impressive. Hathaway stars as a recovering drug addict home for her sister's wedding. The movie is funny, uncomfortable, loving and sometimes painful - just like a real family reunion.Kurt & Courtney is the infamous documentary that pretty much blames Kurt Cobain's death on Courtney Love. It's a fairly interesting movie, but seems a bit one sided. Love would not be interviewed for the film. Director Nick Broomfield ("Battle for Haditha") has created the perfect film for conspiracy theorists. I enjoyed it, but it's not great.
]]>Mon, 30 Mar 2009 02:26:08 GMTdibotdibot Blog3/29/2009 10:26:08 PMI freaking love Newsies and I don't care who knows it. The love may stem from the fact that I saw it first when I was younger, but it may just be Christian Bale ("The Dark Knight") singing and dancing about. Inspired by actual events, the story follows a group of newsboys as they go on strike when Joseph Pulitzer raises the price of the newspaper. It's still a lot of fun, but some of the choreography is meh and the film is, of course, cheesy. It's Disney after all. But I still love it.I just got bored watching He's Just Not That Into You. There's no reason for this thing to be 2 1/2 hours long, unless it's trying to live up to the length of the title. A bunch of lessons on relationships, which we should really know already. Though the cast is filled with big names, I enjoyed Justin Long ("Zack and Miri Make a Porno") the most. But he's kind of my favorite actor right now. Maybe watch this when it comes on cable.Vicky Cristina Barcelona seems like a return to form for writer/director Woody Allen ("Cassandra's Dream"). Two Americans go to Barcelona and get involved with a painter. Then his ex-wife, Penelope Cruz ("Elegy"), turns up to add even more spice to the situation. Cruz just blows up the screen every time she's on, totally deserving her Oscar. She's the best part of the movie. The worst part is the voice-over. But all in all, enjoyable.Anne Hathaway ("Get Smart") gives an Oscar nominated performance (I'm still catching up on my reviews) in Rachel Getting Married, and she's very impressive. Hathaway stars as a recovering drug addict home for her sister's wedding. The movie is funny, uncomfortable, loving and sometimes painful - just like a real family reunion.Kurt &amp; Courtney is the infamous documentary that pretty much blames Kurt Cobain's death on Courtney Love. It's a fairly interesting movie, but seems a bit one sided. Love would not be interviewed for the film. Director Nick Broomfield ("Battle for Haditha") has created the perfect film for conspiracy theorists. I enjoyed it, but it's not great. http://www.spout.com/blogs/digby00/archive/2009/3/28/41309.aspx Post By: digby00
Post To: digby00 Blog
Post Date: 3/28/2009 12:21:29 PM
Body: I don't have much to say about this film. It was funny and cute at times, all of the cast's performances were good, and there is a relatively happy ending. "Into You" moved along well and there were interesting twists and turns. The cameos from comedians during transitional scenes were random but very funny. You will look forward to them throughout because without them, this romantic comedy would not really be that funny....Read the rest of this critic's review here
]]>Sat, 28 Mar 2009 16:21:29 GMTdigby00digby00 Blog3/28/2009 12:21:29 PMI don't have much to say about this film. It was funny and cute at times, all of the cast's performances were good, and there is a relatively happy ending. "Into You" moved along well and there were interesting twists and turns. The cameos from comedians during transitional scenes were random but very funny. You will look forward to them throughout because without them, this romantic comedy would not really be that funny....Read the rest of this critic's review here http://www.spout.com/blogs/spoutblog/archive/2009/2/27/40716.aspx Post By: SpoutBlog
Post To: SpoutBlog on spout.com
Post Date: 2/27/2009 6:02:07 PM
Body: The American Medical Association Alliance is unhappy with the appearance of a specific cigarette brand (American Spirit Lights) in He’s Just Not That Into You and is filing an official complaint to Warner Bros. and Time Warner over the issue. Brooks Barnes reports in today’s New York Times that the advocacy group doesn’t care that smoking is shown in a bad light in the romantic comedy (a character gets dumped for lying about quitting smoking, an offense seen as even worse than cheating); they think any acknowledgment of the act of smoking cigarettes — even if nobody is actually seen smoking onscreen, a la HJNTIY — could influence young people to start smoking. The smoking in movies issue has brought about much debate regarding censorship in the last few years, but I say bring on the smoking ban. And then Hollywood can get creative with hints at smoking the way it used to use innuendo and other fun tricks to imply sex. The irony would be that in the past, cigarettes were used as such implicit hints (see Love is a Many-Splendored Thing; Chinatown and just about any Hays Code-era film). I also say that this AMA organization should be happy that Hollywood is at least promoting a healthier brand of cigs, such as the all-natural American Spirits. Last year’s underrated male fantasy rom-com Definitely, Maybe went so far as to devote an entire flirting scene to why people should smoke the longer-lasting American Spirits than other brands. Funny, I don’t recall any complaints from the AMA regarding that movie (though here’s an interesting complaint from the New Mexico Media Literacy Project, at least). Although this complaint wasn’t the biggest film blog topic of the day (that might be whining about Leo DiCaprio’s Neverending Story remake), here are the few other responses I found around the net: In addition to sharing a video of the best cigarette commercial ever (it stars The Flintstones), Scott Von Doviak at The Screengrab notes that the AMA should concentrate on other health risks to young moviegoers, such as obesity: That’s right, all the kids need to see is that bright yellow box and it’s all over. Hey, you know what else comes in a bright yellow box? The eight dollar 12-pack of Butterfinger Bites at the concession counter, along with all the other sugary crap your kids are clogging their arteries with while they watch He’s Just Not That Into You. Richard at Gawker, after joking about lonely HJNTIY fans being better off starting smoking, offers support for the complaint: Really, though, the AMA is right. There’s no reason to put brand-name cigarettes in the movie. It adds some verité perhaps. But we are, again, talking about a movie whose thesis is that the unendingly complex communications between people can be boiled down to something like “men are mean, and women are shrill and lonely.” So. Matthew Perpetua also uses the opportunity to make fun of how silly the movie is, but unlike Richard, he’s against the complaint: “With all due to respect to the AMA and its mission, this is almost as ridiculous as a movie about people who still use MySpace, in which a character played by Ginnifer Goodwin can’t find a date.” Originally posted on:SpoutBlog
]]>Fri, 27 Feb 2009 23:02:07 GMTSpoutBlogSpoutBlog on spout.com2/27/2009 6:02:07 PMThe American Medical Association Alliance is unhappy with the appearance of a specific cigarette brand (American Spirit Lights) in He’s Just Not That Into You and is filing an official complaint to Warner Bros. and Time Warner over the issue. Brooks Barnes reports in today’s New York Times that the advocacy group doesn’t care that smoking is shown in a bad light in the romantic comedy (a character gets dumped for lying about quitting smoking, an offense seen as even worse than cheating); they think any acknowledgment of the act of smoking cigarettes — even if nobody is actually seen smoking onscreen, a la HJNTIY — could influence young people to start smoking. The smoking in movies issue has brought about much debate regarding censorship in the last few years, but I say bring on the smoking ban. And then Hollywood can get creative with hints at smoking the way it used to use innuendo and other fun tricks to imply sex. The irony would be that in the past, cigarettes were used as such implicit hints (see Love is a Many-Splendored Thing; Chinatown and just about any Hays Code-era film). I also say that this AMA organization should be happy that Hollywood is at least promoting a healthier brand of cigs, such as the all-natural American Spirits. Last year’s underrated male fantasy rom-com Definitely, Maybe went so far as to devote an entire flirting scene to why people should smoke the longer-lasting American Spirits than other brands. Funny, I don’t recall any complaints from the AMA regarding that movie (though here’s an interesting complaint from the New Mexico Media Literacy Project, at least). Although this complaint wasn’t the biggest film blog topic of the day (that might be whining about Leo DiCaprio’s Neverending Story remake), here are the few other responses I found around the net: In addition to sharing a video of the best cigarette commercial ever (it stars The Flintstones), Scott Von Doviak at The Screengrab notes that the AMA should concentrate on other health risks to young moviegoers, such as obesity: That’s right, all the kids need to see is that bright yellow box and it’s all over. Hey, you know what else comes in a bright yellow box? The eight dollar 12-pack of Butterfinger Bites at the concession counter, along with all the other sugary crap your kids are clogging their arteries with while they watch He’s Just Not That Into You. Richard at Gawker, after joking about lonely HJNTIY fans being better off starting smoking, offers support for the complaint: Really, though, the AMA is right. There’s no reason to put brand-name cigarettes in the movie. It adds some verité perhaps. But we are, again, talking about a movie whose thesis is that the unendingly complex communications between people can be boiled down to something like “men are mean, and women are shrill and lonely.” So. Matthew Perpetua also uses the opportunity to make fun of how silly the movie is, but unlike Richard, he’s against the complaint: “With all due to respect to the AMA and its mission, this is almost as ridiculous as a movie about people who still use MySpace, in which a character played by Ginnifer Goodwin can’t find a date.” Originally posted on:SpoutBlog http://www.spout.com/blogs/risatrix/archive/2009/2/6/40327.aspx Post By: risatrix
Post To: risatrix Blog
Post Date: 2/6/2009 8:41:24 PM
Body: Originally, I was just not that into the idea of going to this movie. I've moved past the days of waiting by the phone for a guy (thank goodness!) and didn't necessarily want to go back. But I had a major job interview last week and I've found myself waiting by the phone once again, albeit for different reasons. So today I decided to leave the phone on the kitchen table and give this movie a whirl. It's an interesting experiment: a romantic comedy struggling with the advent of real-life problems. There are the two lovers just waiting to be united, of course. But there's also a marriage on the rocks, a philandering husband, a great guy who just doesn't want to get married, and a player who goes through women like Kleenex. Because of its many characters, the movie is quite episodic and drags at points, but this is only to be expected. I enjoyed seeing so many women on the screen, and the cast did a fine job overall. Ginnifer Goodwin sparkles as Gigi, a girl who is just a tad obsessive about dates. Gigi befriends cute bartender Alex (Justin Long), who gives her advice from a man's point of view. Gigi works with Beth (Jennifer Aniston) and Janine (Jennifer Connolly), who is married to Ben (Bradley Cooper). But Ben falls for yoga instructor Anna (Scarlett Johansson). Anna, meanwhile, dangles along nice guy Conor (Kevin Connolly) as her safety and complains to her editor friend Mary (Drew Barrymore). Finally, Ben is friends with Neil (Ben Affleck), who is living happily with Beth, but remains totally opposed to marriage. Got all that? If you don't, that's OK. The movie does a good job weaving the relationships together and moving from story to story in a manner that anyone can follow. There's not much to say about how the various couples break up and make up—you can figure most of it out from the trailer—but what I found intriguing was the movie's odd relationship with comedy. There are a few laughs, but more often the movie's humor is of the painful variety—think "The Office" rather than SNL here. This makes sense, as the director is "Office" veteran Ken Kwapis. And there's really no way a movie focused on problematic relationships can proceed without a healthy dose of realism. Still, don't go to this movie expecting a laugh riot or a romantic walk through the park. Yet the movie is still anchored to its roots as a romantic comedy, and especially to the equation that sex=love=marriage. In the real world, that equation is completely false, of course. In this regard, the movie fails as a "women's" movie despite its talented female cast. I'll bet any woman can spot what's missing here: babies. The biological clock means that women do not necessarily have the luxury of waiting for the guy who's so into them that he will decide to propose. The movie, of course, doesn't even bring up the issue of children, and frankly there's no way it could without crossing into some seriously unromantic territory. But the movie made a valiant effort to speak to men and women, I'll give it that much. The guys aren't all bad (Kris Kristofferson has a great cameo as Beth's doting father) and some of them even experience personal growth. Slick Alex falls prey to the same type of obsession that he warns GiGi against--at least suggesting that being a romantic idiot isn't only a woman's problem. Beth and Janine eventually decide that marriage is not the end-all, be-all of a relationship. Come to think of it, marriage as an idea takes a beating in the movie, justly or not, which is an interesting perspective for movie about happy couples. But romance is still the central theme. Despite Gigi's voiceover at the end, which proclaims that the happy ending doesn't have to involve a guy at all, the majority of the stories do not support this assertion. Still, I'd recommend this movie because it's interesting to watch and might spark some good debate between the sexes. And it's not as if the movie fails as a comedy. I was surprised to find that despite its tendency towards (sometimes painful) realism, the movie effectively cheered me up—exactly the point of a comedy, in my view. It just goes to show that the truth is funny, even you're not laughing out loud.
]]>Sat, 07 Feb 2009 01:41:24 GMTrisatrixrisatrix Blog2/6/2009 8:41:24 PM Originally, I was just not that into the idea of going to this movie. I've moved past the days of waiting by the phone for a guy (thank goodness!) and didn't necessarily want to go back. But I had a major job interview last week and I've found myself waiting by the phone once again, albeit for different reasons. So today I decided to leave the phone on the kitchen table and give this movie a whirl. It's an interesting experiment: a romantic comedy struggling with the advent of real-life problems. There are the two lovers just waiting to be united, of course. But there's also a marriage on the rocks, a philandering husband, a great guy who just doesn't want to get married, and a player who goes through women like Kleenex. Because of its many characters, the movie is quite episodic and drags at points, but this is only to be expected. I enjoyed seeing so many women on the screen, and the cast did a fine job overall. Ginnifer Goodwin sparkles as Gigi, a girl who is just a tad obsessive about dates. Gigi befriends cute bartender Alex (Justin Long), who gives her advice from a man's point of view. Gigi works with Beth (Jennifer Aniston) and Janine (Jennifer Connolly), who is married to Ben (Bradley Cooper). But Ben falls for yoga instructor Anna (Scarlett Johansson). Anna, meanwhile, dangles along nice guy Conor (Kevin Connolly) as her safety and complains to her editor friend Mary (Drew Barrymore). Finally, Ben is friends with Neil (Ben Affleck), who is living happily with Beth, but remains totally opposed to marriage. Got all that? If you don't, that's OK. The movie does a good job weaving the relationships together and moving from story to story in a manner that anyone can follow. There's not much to say about how the various couples break up and make up&mdash;you can figure most of it out from the trailer&mdash;but what I found intriguing was the movie's odd relationship with comedy. There are a few laughs, but more often the movie's humor is of the painful variety&mdash;think "The Office" rather than SNL here. This makes sense, as the director is "Office" veteran Ken Kwapis. And there's really no way a movie focused on problematic relationships can proceed without a healthy dose of realism. Still, don't go to this movie expecting a laugh riot or a romantic walk through the park. Yet the movie is still anchored to its roots as a romantic comedy, and especially to the equation that sex=love=marriage. In the real world, that equation is completely false, of course. In this regard, the movie fails as a "women's" movie despite its talented female cast. I'll bet any woman can spot what's missing here: babies. The biological clock means that women do not necessarily have the luxury of waiting for the guy who's so into them that he will decide to propose. The movie, of course, doesn't even bring up the issue of children, and frankly there's no way it could without crossing into some seriously unromantic territory. But the movie made a valiant effort to speak to men and women, I'll give it that much. The guys aren't all bad (Kris Kristofferson has a great cameo as Beth's doting father) and some of them even experience personal growth. Slick Alex falls prey to the same type of obsession that he warns GiGi against--at least suggesting that being a romantic idiot isn't only a woman's problem. Beth and Janine eventually decide that marriage is not the end-all, be-all of a relationship. Come to think of it, marriage as an idea takes a beating in the movie, justly or not, which is an interesting perspective for movie about happy couples. But romance is still the central theme. Despite Gigi's voiceover at the end, which proclaims that the happy ending doesn't have to involve a guy at all, the majority of the stories do not support this assertion. Still, I'd recommend this movie because it's interesting to watch and might spark some good debate between the sexes. And it's not as if the movie fails as a comedy. I was surprised to find that despite its tendency towards (sometimes painful) realism, the movie effectively cheered me up&mdash;exactly the point of a comedy, in my view. It just goes to show that the truth is funny, even you're not laughing out loud. http://www.spout.com/blogs/mercurial/archive/2009/2/6/40325.aspx Post By: mercurial
Post To: a filmblog
Post Date: 2/6/2009 7:37:05 PM
Body: An Altmanesque romantic comedy for the dwindling subset of Generation X that still identifies with that moniker, He's Just Not That Into You is a rather uncomplicated examination of modern relationships and the havoc that the act of examining them causes the individuals involved. Set against the lovely urban paradise known as Baltimore, the film floats its attention between nine individuals desperately trying to find love and maintain a lasting relationship amid the whirlwind of advice from friends, family, coworkers and overly sentimental consciences. The startling amount of A-list thespians littering the screen surprisingly blend together rather harmoniously: characters are developed and individual story arcs completed without any single one trying to overshadow the other. Obviously the result of a television obsessed society, the later portion of the film falls prey to annoyingly sporadic jumps between the parallel story-lines, however, the film remains true to its focus on relationships and thusly succeeds with its thoughtfully articulated dialogue and insightful ruminations on love.
]]>Sat, 07 Feb 2009 00:37:05 GMTmercuriala filmblog2/6/2009 7:37:05 PMAn Altmanesque romantic comedy for the dwindling subset of Generation X that still identifies with that moniker, He's Just Not That Into You is a rather uncomplicated examination of modern relationships and the havoc that the act of examining them causes the individuals involved. Set against the lovely urban paradise known as Baltimore, the film floats its attention between nine individuals desperately trying to find love and maintain a lasting relationship amid the whirlwind of advice from friends, family, coworkers and overly sentimental consciences. The startling amount of A-list thespians littering the screen surprisingly blend together rather harmoniously: characters are developed and individual story arcs completed without any single one trying to overshadow the other. Obviously the result of a television obsessed society, the later portion of the film falls prey to annoyingly sporadic jumps between the parallel story-lines, however, the film remains true to its focus on relationships and thusly succeeds with its thoughtfully articulated dialogue and insightful ruminations on love. http://www.spout.com/blogs/spoutblog/archive/2009/2/6/40301.aspx Post By: SpoutBlog
Post To: SpoutBlog on spout.com
Post Date: 2/6/2009 9:01:20 AM
Body: We’ve already talked about the sickly-sweet little movie that could, Slumdog Millionaire, but it’s looming Oscar domination convinced us to revisit it. This time Paul weighs in with his opinion, and draws a parallel to John Singleton’s Boyz ‘N the Hood. Watchmen is still a month away, but the buzz is already reaching a crescendo. It’s gotten to the point where the thing to talk about is how much people are talking about Watchmen. We play a clip from an interview with director Zach Snyder, who tries, somewhat unsuccessfully, to convince us he’s the man for the job. A movie based an a self-help book based on a Sex In The City episode? Karina couldn’t resist. He’s Just Not That Into You isn’t very funny, but it does provide some insight into the inner workings of romantic comedies. (Subscribe to FilmCouch–Spout’s weekly movie podcast–in the iTunes store or to our RSS feed and an episode will download each Friday) 0:00 - Intro 2:10 - Listener e-mail 6:44 - Paul’s take on Slumdog Millionaire 17:33 - Watching the Watchmen hype machine 30:24 - Karina on He’s Just Not That Into You filmcouch-107 Originally posted on:SpoutBlog
]]>Fri, 06 Feb 2009 14:01:20 GMTSpoutBlogSpoutBlog on spout.com2/6/2009 9:01:20 AM We’ve already talked about the sickly-sweet little movie that could, Slumdog Millionaire, but it’s looming Oscar domination convinced us to revisit it. This time Paul weighs in with his opinion, and draws a parallel to John Singleton’s Boyz ‘N the Hood. Watchmen is still a month away, but the buzz is already reaching a crescendo. It’s gotten to the point where the thing to talk about is how much people are talking about Watchmen. We play a clip from an interview with director Zach Snyder, who tries, somewhat unsuccessfully, to convince us he’s the man for the job. A movie based an a self-help book based on a Sex In The City episode? Karina couldn’t resist. He’s Just Not That Into You isn’t very funny, but it does provide some insight into the inner workings of romantic comedies. (Subscribe to FilmCouch–Spout’s weekly movie podcast–in the iTunes store or to our RSS feed and an episode will download each Friday) 0:00 - Intro 2:10 - Listener e-mail 6:44 - Paul’s take on Slumdog Millionaire 17:33 - Watching the Watchmen hype machine 30:24 - Karina on He’s Just Not That Into You filmcouch-107 Originally posted on:SpoutBlog http://www.spout.com/blogs/karina/archive/2009/2/5/40277.aspx Post By: Karina
Post To: Karina on SpoutBlog
Post Date: 2/5/2009 3:02:10 PM
Body: Having seen the trailer for the Ken Kwapis’ cast-of-a-thousand stars self help book dramatization He’s Just Not That Into You many, many times (I watch a lot of SoapNET, Lifetime and, uh, MSNBC), I felt reasonably certain going in that I knew exactly what kind of film it was going to be: a wacky, light romantic comedy of mating manners, set in an alternate universe in which otherwise cosmopolitan adults can’t figure out how to use MySpace, and in which all normal and abnormal interpersonal neuroses and difficulties with intimacy are transposed into total paralysis over text messaging. I hope that someday soon, someone in Hollywood makes the film that He’s Not That Into You Was advertised as, because that’s sounds like the exact kind of science fiction that I really enjoy. But He’s Not That Into You is definitely not that film. The question is: what the hell is it? That Into You fails to fit neatly into assumptions bred by its advertising and its genre makes it somewhat more interesting, if only because it forces us to contend with it what our expectations actually are when we go to see a romantic comedy, and what it would actually mean to subvert them. Screenwriters Abby Kohn and Marc Silverstein seem to be very aware of contemporary romantic comedy conventions, as well as a certain tradition of final inning moral clean-up that dates back to the very earliest examples of the genre produced under the Hayes Code. But they have no interest in depriving a mass audience of the crack hit of cinematic junk food that they were promised by the promos. The film’s ultimate willingness to pander to expectation may make it a disappointment on a critical level, but I’m not sure making the audience conscious of the way their guilty pleasure works before giving it to them is something for which the filmmakers should be reprimanded. The underlying theoretical tenet of Into You is that women spend their whole lives in a state of wishful delusion, and that this is largely the fault of other women. Mothers and teachers tell us before we can read that boys who hit us and pick on us actually love us. In adult female friendships, we’re generally too polite (and/or scared) to puncture a friend’s “but don’t you think he’ll call?” fantasies when we know her phone isn’t going to ring. These universal anxieties are channeled on screen by a young copywriter named Gigi, played by Ginnifer Goodwin. Like many young women, Gigi is so concerned with the minutia of “signs”, the nonexistent meaning that she reads into a man’s every gesture and inflection, that though she’s constantly worked up into a frenzy over one potential love or another, she’s completely out of touch with what it feels like to … feel. So far, so good! But then, whilst stalking a blind date who never called, Gigi meets a bartender (Justin Long) who tells her that everything she thinks she knows about men is wrong. And then Gigi’s 40-something coworker (Jennifer Aniston) breaks up with her boyfriend because he says he doesn’t believe in marriage. And then her other 40-something coworker (Jennifer Connelly) becomes obsessed with the idea that her dudely husband (Bradley Cooper) has been secretly smoking, yet is oblivious to the fact that he’s actually been secretly sleeping with an unabashed temptress (Scarlett Johannsson), whose seduction of the married man has been encouraged by her hippie-flower friend (Drew Barrymore), who also helps the mistress fend off the advances of the guy who plays the manager on Entourage, who is also the blind date that our original heroine was moved to stalk. I’m fairly certain there are seven or eight other stars that I’m forgetting who are also tangled in this web of sexual intrigue, but the only one I remember is Luis Guzman, who has one very funny scene, and who doesn’t have sex with anyone (unfortunately). Though not more than two hours, Into You feels twice as long, even as plotlines have clearly been truncated and scenes redacted in the interest of brevity. It must be said that in illustrating these tangles, Into You is tougher, slower, less interested in easy laughs and much more patiently talky than you’d expect it to be, and even when that “talk” reads clearly as lines straight off the self-help page, the film’s unflinching attention to paranoia and misery is, in its way, refreshing. But it might be easier to take Into You seriously as a sincere statement on contemporary life and dating rituals if it wasn’t so hard to confuse its imagery with a “Stars — they’re just like US!” spread in US Weekly. There are so many celebrities in this thing that it’s impossible to think of the celestial presences on screen as characters; either each actor has been cast with laser-guided precision for what they best bring, or else there is no acting in this picture whatsoever. And in the case of some of the actors, there’s such a blurring between certain aspects of the character and certain aspects of the persona of the star who plays them, that it almost has to be intentional. Most glaringly: Jennifer Aniston steps out of a Lonely Jen spread and into a plot that has her walking away from her boyfriend of seven years (Ben Affleck, full of the moldability, desperation to please yet reticence to marry that the tabloids would have us believe marked his relationship with Jennifer Lopez). Aniston’s character eventually, improbably gets her happy ending in the final reel, but the bulk of the film is about watching her be alone and miserable while everyone around her tells her there’s something wrong with her because she’s not married. Whatever kind of pleasure it is that people get from consuming that tabloid image of a terminally unlucky-in-love Jennifer Aniston, that pleasure is pumped directly into this film. In fact, throughout Into You, the pleasures offered are not conventionally pleasurable at all. We’ve been talking quite a bit lately about comedies of uncomfortability — films which don’t seek to provoke laughs through “jokes” or traditional laugh lines as much as they seek to provoke squirming, and laughter comes as a by-product of the squirms. Instead of laugh lines, Into You has gasp lines –– scenes continually build up to a narrative revelation or statement of raw honesty that seem designed to elicit an audible intake of air from the audience –– and the laughs come as a by-product of the gasps. Sometimes, as in a scene where Jennifer Connolly’s repressed anger over her husband’s affair comes to the surface, Into You will strain for absolute seriousness for a genuinely uncomfortable length of time, and then break the mood with a single joke, in a “just playin’” concession to the audience. But there’s no greater audience concession than those final-reel happy endings. For much of its running time, Into You is very –– how to put it –– European in its attitudes towards sex, infidelity, and commitment, in that it allows people to be people and to make the mistakes that real people realistically make. And for a while, it seems like the point of the thing is to suck you into the tropes of movie love, only to throw those tropes in your face. But in the end, the cheaters and seducers are punished, and anyone who isn’t on a one-way track to an airtight marriage ends up alone. This screwball dramedy –– in which a plucky girl with bobbed, wavy hair talks fast and moves fast and gets her man in the end –– hews to the exact pattern of the post-Code romance of Classical Hollywood, in which the last few minutes of the film would be devoted to restoring the moral social order torn asunder by working women (career girls and girls of the night alike), economic desparation (represented here by Johansson’s character, who lives in a one-room apartment and wears raggy hair extensions and ill-fitting, ripped jeans which are perhaps suppossed to look sexy, but actually make her look like a street urchin), and the torments of the ego. Into You, of course, doesn’t go for the last-minute turnaround in order to fit to a censorship code –– although today’s romantic films are so homogenously safe in their vision of morality that the Hayes Office could reopen without incident. No, Into You gives everyone sudden magic rosy endings because it understands who its audience is, and that ultimately, that audience doesn’t come to the movies to get their expectations subverted. They don’t want to think about the way the world works, or the way movies work, while sitting in front of that screen; they come to the movies to sink in the fantasy that It Could Happen To Them. He’s Just Not That Into You is smart for what it is, but it refuses to be condescendingly smarter than the people it exists to please. And that makes it even smarter. Originally posted on:SpoutBlog » Karina Longworth
]]>Thu, 05 Feb 2009 20:02:10 GMTKarinaKarina on SpoutBlog2/5/2009 3:02:10 PMHaving seen the trailer for the Ken Kwapis’ cast-of-a-thousand stars self help book dramatization He’s Just Not That Into You many, many times (I watch a lot of SoapNET, Lifetime and, uh, MSNBC), I felt reasonably certain going in that I knew exactly what kind of film it was going to be: a wacky, light romantic comedy of mating manners, set in an alternate universe in which otherwise cosmopolitan adults can’t figure out how to use MySpace, and in which all normal and abnormal interpersonal neuroses and difficulties with intimacy are transposed into total paralysis over text messaging. I hope that someday soon, someone in Hollywood makes the film that He’s Not That Into You Was advertised as, because that’s sounds like the exact kind of science fiction that I really enjoy. But He’s Not That Into You is definitely not that film. The question is: what the hell is it? That Into You fails to fit neatly into assumptions bred by its advertising and its genre makes it somewhat more interesting, if only because it forces us to contend with it what our expectations actually are when we go to see a romantic comedy, and what it would actually mean to subvert them. Screenwriters Abby Kohn and Marc Silverstein seem to be very aware of contemporary romantic comedy conventions, as well as a certain tradition of final inning moral clean-up that dates back to the very earliest examples of the genre produced under the Hayes Code. But they have no interest in depriving a mass audience of the crack hit of cinematic junk food that they were promised by the promos. The film’s ultimate willingness to pander to expectation may make it a disappointment on a critical level, but I’m not sure making the audience conscious of the way their guilty pleasure works before giving it to them is something for which the filmmakers should be reprimanded. The underlying theoretical tenet of Into You is that women spend their whole lives in a state of wishful delusion, and that this is largely the fault of other women. Mothers and teachers tell us before we can read that boys who hit us and pick on us actually love us. In adult female friendships, we’re generally too polite (and/or scared) to puncture a friend’s “but don’t you think he’ll call?” fantasies when we know her phone isn’t going to ring. These universal anxieties are channeled on screen by a young copywriter named Gigi, played by Ginnifer Goodwin. Like many young women, Gigi is so concerned with the minutia of “signs”, the nonexistent meaning that she reads into a man’s every gesture and inflection, that though she’s constantly worked up into a frenzy over one potential love or another, she’s completely out of touch with what it feels like to … feel. So far, so good! But then, whilst stalking a blind date who never called, Gigi meets a bartender (Justin Long) who tells her that everything she thinks she knows about men is wrong. And then Gigi’s 40-something coworker (Jennifer Aniston) breaks up with her boyfriend because he says he doesn’t believe in marriage. And then her other 40-something coworker (Jennifer Connelly) becomes obsessed with the idea that her dudely husband (Bradley Cooper) has been secretly smoking, yet is oblivious to the fact that he’s actually been secretly sleeping with an unabashed temptress (Scarlett Johannsson), whose seduction of the married man has been encouraged by her hippie-flower friend (Drew Barrymore), who also helps the mistress fend off the advances of the guy who plays the manager on Entourage, who is also the blind date that our original heroine was moved to stalk. I’m fairly certain there are seven or eight other stars that I’m forgetting who are also tangled in this web of sexual intrigue, but the only one I remember is Luis Guzman, who has one very funny scene, and who doesn’t have sex with anyone (unfortunately). Though not more than two hours, Into You feels twice as long, even as plotlines have clearly been truncated and scenes redacted in the interest of brevity. It must be said that in illustrating these tangles, Into You is tougher, slower, less interested in easy laughs and much more patiently talky than you’d expect it to be, and even when that “talk” reads clearly as lines straight off the self-help page, the film’s unflinching attention to paranoia and misery is, in its way, refreshing. But it might be easier to take Into You seriously as a sincere statement on contemporary life and dating rituals if it wasn’t so hard to confuse its imagery with a “Stars — they’re just like US!” spread in US Weekly. There are so many celebrities in this thing that it’s impossible to think of the celestial presences on screen as characters; either each actor has been cast with laser-guided precision for what they best bring, or else there is no acting in this picture whatsoever. And in the case of some of the actors, there’s such a blurring between certain aspects of the character and certain aspects of the persona of the star who plays them, that it almost has to be intentional. Most glaringly: Jennifer Aniston steps out of a Lonely Jen spread and into a plot that has her walking away from her boyfriend of seven years (Ben Affleck, full of the moldability, desperation to please yet reticence to marry that the tabloids would have us believe marked his relationship with Jennifer Lopez). Aniston’s character eventually, improbably gets her happy ending in the final reel, but the bulk of the film is about watching her be alone and miserable while everyone around her tells her there’s something wrong with her because she’s not married. Whatever kind of pleasure it is that people get from consuming that tabloid image of a terminally unlucky-in-love Jennifer Aniston, that pleasure is pumped directly into this film. In fact, throughout Into You, the pleasures offered are not conventionally pleasurable at all. We’ve been talking quite a bit lately about comedies of uncomfortability — films which don’t seek to provoke laughs through “jokes” or traditional laugh lines as much as they seek to provoke squirming, and laughter comes as a by-product of the squirms. Instead of laugh lines, Into You has gasp lines –– scenes continually build up to a narrative revelation or statement of raw honesty that seem designed to elicit an audible intake of air from the audience –– and the laughs come as a by-product of the gasps. Sometimes, as in a scene where Jennifer Connolly’s repressed anger over her husband’s affair comes to the surface, Into You will strain for absolute seriousness for a genuinely uncomfortable length of time, and then break the mood with a single joke, in a “just playin’” concession to the audience. But there’s no greater audience concession than those final-reel happy endings. For much of its running time, Into You is very –– how to put it –– European in its attitudes towards sex, infidelity, and commitment, in that it allows people to be people and to make the mistakes that real people realistically make. And for a while, it seems like the point of the thing is to suck you into the tropes of movie love, only to throw those tropes in your face. But in the end, the cheaters and seducers are punished, and anyone who isn’t on a one-way track to an airtight marriage ends up alone. This screwball dramedy –– in which a plucky girl with bobbed, wavy hair talks fast and moves fast and gets her man in the end –– hews to the exact pattern of the post-Code romance of Classical Hollywood, in which the last few minutes of the film would be devoted to restoring the moral social order torn asunder by working women (career girls and girls of the night alike), economic desparation (represented here by Johansson’s character, who lives in a one-room apartment and wears raggy hair extensions and ill-fitting, ripped jeans which are perhaps suppossed to look sexy, but actually make her look like a street urchin), and the torments of the ego. Into You, of course, doesn’t go for the last-minute turnaround in order to fit to a censorship code –– although today’s romantic films are so homogenously safe in their vision of morality that the Hayes Office could reopen without incident. No, Into You gives everyone sudden magic rosy endings because it understands who its audience is, and that ultimately, that audience doesn’t come to the movies to get their expectations subverted. They don’t want to think about the way the world works, or the way movies work, while sitting in front of that screen; they come to the movies to sink in the fantasy that It Could Happen To Them. He’s Just Not That Into You is smart for what it is, but it refuses to be condescendingly smarter than the people it exists to please. And that makes it even smarter. Originally posted on:SpoutBlog » Karina Longworth http://www.spout.com/blogs/spoutblog/archive/2009/2/5/40276.aspx Post By: SpoutBlog
Post To: SpoutBlog on spout.com
Post Date: 2/5/2009 3:01:11 PM
Body: Having seen the trailer for the Ken Kwapis’ cast-of-a-thousand stars self help book dramatization He’s Just Not That Into You many, many times (I watch a lot of SoapNET, Lifetime and, uh, MSNBC), I felt reasonably certain going in that I knew exactly what kind of film it was going to be: a wacky, light romantic comedy of mating manners, set in an alternate universe in which otherwise cosmopolitan adults can’t figure out how to use MySpace, and in which all normal and abnormal interpersonal neuroses and difficulties with intimacy are transposed into total paralysis over text messaging. I hope that someday soon, someone in Hollywood makes the film that He’s Not That Into You Was advertised as, because that’s sounds like the exact kind of science fiction that I really enjoy. But He’s Not That Into You is definitely not that film. The question is: what the hell is it? That Into You fails to fit neatly into assumptions bred by its advertising and its genre makes it somewhat more interesting, if only because it forces us to contend with it what our expectations actually are when we go to see a romantic comedy, and what it would actually mean to subvert them. Screenwriters Abby Kohn and Marc Silverstein seem to be very aware of contemporary romantic comedy conventions, as well as a certain tradition of final inning moral clean-up that dates back to the very earliest examples of the genre produced under the Hayes Code. But they have no interest in depriving a mass audience of the crack hit of cinematic junk food that they were promised by the promos. The film’s ultimate willingness to pander to expectation may make it a disappointment on a critical level, but I’m not sure making the audience conscious of the way their guilty pleasure works before giving it to them is something for which the filmmakers should be reprimanded. The underlying theoretical tenet of Into You is that women spend their whole lives in a state of wishful delusion, and that this is largely the fault of other women. Mothers and teachers tell us before we can read that boys who hit us and pick on us actually love us. In adult female friendships, we’re generally too polite (and/or scared) to puncture a friend’s “but don’t you think he’ll call?” fantasies when we know her phone isn’t going to ring. These universal anxieties are channeled on screen by a young copywriter named Gigi, played by Ginnifer Goodwin. Like many young women, Gigi is so concerned with the minutia of “signs”, the nonexistent meaning that she reads into a man’s every gesture and inflection, that though she’s constantly worked up into a frenzy over one potential love or another, she’s completely out of touch with what it feels like to … feel. So far, so good! But then, whilst stalking a blind date who never called, Gigi meets a bartender (Justin Long) who tells her that everything she thinks she knows about men is wrong. And then Gigi’s 40-something coworker (Jennifer Aniston) breaks up with her boyfriend because he says he doesn’t believe in marriage. And then her other 40-something coworker (Jennifer Connelly) becomes obsessed with the idea that her dudely husband (Bradley Cooper) has been secretly smoking, yet is oblivious to the fact that he’s actually been secretly sleeping with an unabashed temptress (Scarlett Johannsson), whose seduction of the married man has been encouraged by her hippie-flower friend (Drew Barrymore), who also helps the mistress fend off the advances of the guy who plays the manager on Entourage, who is also the blind date that our original heroine was moved to stalk. I’m fairly certain there are seven or eight other stars that I’m forgetting who are also tangled in this web of sexual intrigue, but the only one I remember is Luis Guzman, who has one very funny scene, and who doesn’t have sex with anyone (unfortunately). Though not more than two hours, Into You feels twice as long, even as plotlines have clearly been truncated and scenes redacted in the interest of brevity. It must be said that in illustrating these tangles, Into You is tougher, slower, less interested in easy laughs and much more patiently talky than you’d expect it to be, and even when that “talk” reads clearly as lines straight off the self-help page, the film’s unflinching attention to paranoia and misery is, in its way, refreshing. But it might be easier to take Into You seriously as a sincere statement on contemporary life and dating rituals if it wasn’t so hard to confuse its imagery with a “Stars — they’re just like US!” spread in US Weekly. There are so many celebrities in this thing that it’s impossible to think of the celestial presences on screen as characters; either each actor has been cast with laser-guided precision for what they best bring, or else there is no acting in this picture whatsoever. And in the case of some of the actors, there’s such a blurring between certain aspects of the character and certain aspects of the persona of the star who plays them, that it almost has to be intentional. Most glaringly: Jennifer Aniston steps out of a Lonely Jen spread and into a plot that has her walking away from her boyfriend of seven years (Ben Affleck, full of the moldability, desperation to please yet reticence to marry that the tabloids would have us believe marked his relationship with Jennifer Lopez). Aniston’s character eventually, improbably gets her happy ending in the final reel, but the bulk of the film is about watching her be alone and miserable while everyone around her tells her there’s something wrong with her because she’s not married. Whatever kind of pleasure it is that people get from consuming that tabloid image of a terminally unlucky-in-love Jennifer Aniston, that pleasure is pumped directly into this film. In fact, throughout Into You, the pleasures offered are not conventionally pleasurable at all. We’ve been talking quite a bit lately about comedies of uncomfortability — films which don’t seek to provoke laughs through “jokes” or traditional laugh lines as much as they seek to provoke squirming, and laughter comes as a by-product of the squirms. Instead of laugh lines, Into You has gasp lines –– scenes continually build up to a narrative revelation or statement of raw honesty that seem designed to elicit an audible intake of air from the audience –– and the laughs come as a by-product of the gasps. Sometimes, as in a scene where Jennifer Connolly’s repressed anger over her husband’s affair comes to the surface, Into You will strain for absolute seriousness for a genuinely uncomfortable length of time, and then break the mood with a single joke, in a “just playin’” concession to the audience. But there’s no greater audience concession than those final-reel happy endings. For much of its running time, Into You is very –– how to put it –– European in its attitudes towards sex, infidelity, and commitment, in that it allows people to be people and to make the mistakes that real people realistically make. And for a while, it seems like the point of the thing is to suck you into the tropes of movie love, only to throw those tropes in your face. But in the end, the cheaters and seducers are punished, and anyone who isn’t on a one-way track to an airtight marriage ends up alone. This screwball dramedy –– in which a plucky girl with bobbed, wavy hair talks fast and moves fast and gets her man in the end –– hews to the exact pattern of the post-Code romance of Classical Hollywood, in which the last few minutes of the film would be devoted to restoring the moral social order torn asunder by working women (career girls and girls of the night alike), economic desparation (represented here by Johansson’s character, who lives in a one-room apartment and wears raggy hair extensions and ill-fitting, ripped jeans which are perhaps suppossed to look sexy, but actually make her look like a street urchin), and the torments of the ego. Into You, of course, doesn’t go for the last-minute turnaround in order to fit to a censorship code –– although today’s romantic films are so homogenously safe in their vision of morality that the Hayes Office could reopen without incident. No, Into You gives everyone sudden magic rosy endings because it understands who its audience is, and that ultimately, that audience doesn’t come to the movies to get their expectations subverted. They don’t want to think about the way the world works, or the way movies work, while sitting in front of that screen; they come to the movies to sink in the fantasy that It Could Happen To Them. He’s Just Not That Into You is smart for what it is, but it refuses to be condescendingly smarter than the people it exists to please. And that makes it even smarter. Originally posted on:SpoutBlog
]]>Thu, 05 Feb 2009 20:01:11 GMTSpoutBlogSpoutBlog on spout.com2/5/2009 3:01:11 PMHaving seen the trailer for the Ken Kwapis’ cast-of-a-thousand stars self help book dramatization He’s Just Not That Into You many, many times (I watch a lot of SoapNET, Lifetime and, uh, MSNBC), I felt reasonably certain going in that I knew exactly what kind of film it was going to be: a wacky, light romantic comedy of mating manners, set in an alternate universe in which otherwise cosmopolitan adults can’t figure out how to use MySpace, and in which all normal and abnormal interpersonal neuroses and difficulties with intimacy are transposed into total paralysis over text messaging. I hope that someday soon, someone in Hollywood makes the film that He’s Not That Into You Was advertised as, because that’s sounds like the exact kind of science fiction that I really enjoy. But He’s Not That Into You is definitely not that film. The question is: what the hell is it? That Into You fails to fit neatly into assumptions bred by its advertising and its genre makes it somewhat more interesting, if only because it forces us to contend with it what our expectations actually are when we go to see a romantic comedy, and what it would actually mean to subvert them. Screenwriters Abby Kohn and Marc Silverstein seem to be very aware of contemporary romantic comedy conventions, as well as a certain tradition of final inning moral clean-up that dates back to the very earliest examples of the genre produced under the Hayes Code. But they have no interest in depriving a mass audience of the crack hit of cinematic junk food that they were promised by the promos. The film’s ultimate willingness to pander to expectation may make it a disappointment on a critical level, but I’m not sure making the audience conscious of the way their guilty pleasure works before giving it to them is something for which the filmmakers should be reprimanded. The underlying theoretical tenet of Into You is that women spend their whole lives in a state of wishful delusion, and that this is largely the fault of other women. Mothers and teachers tell us before we can read that boys who hit us and pick on us actually love us. In adult female friendships, we’re generally too polite (and/or scared) to puncture a friend’s “but don’t you think he’ll call?” fantasies when we know her phone isn’t going to ring. These universal anxieties are channeled on screen by a young copywriter named Gigi, played by Ginnifer Goodwin. Like many young women, Gigi is so concerned with the minutia of “signs”, the nonexistent meaning that she reads into a man’s every gesture and inflection, that though she’s constantly worked up into a frenzy over one potential love or another, she’s completely out of touch with what it feels like to … feel. So far, so good! But then, whilst stalking a blind date who never called, Gigi meets a bartender (Justin Long) who tells her that everything she thinks she knows about men is wrong. And then Gigi’s 40-something coworker (Jennifer Aniston) breaks up with her boyfriend because he says he doesn’t believe in marriage. And then her other 40-something coworker (Jennifer Connelly) becomes obsessed with the idea that her dudely husband (Bradley Cooper) has been secretly smoking, yet is oblivious to the fact that he’s actually been secretly sleeping with an unabashed temptress (Scarlett Johannsson), whose seduction of the married man has been encouraged by her hippie-flower friend (Drew Barrymore), who also helps the mistress fend off the advances of the guy who plays the manager on Entourage, who is also the blind date that our original heroine was moved to stalk. I’m fairly certain there are seven or eight other stars that I’m forgetting who are also tangled in this web of sexual intrigue, but the only one I remember is Luis Guzman, who has one very funny scene, and who doesn’t have sex with anyone (unfortunately). Though not more than two hours, Into You feels twice as long, even as plotlines have clearly been truncated and scenes redacted in the interest of brevity. It must be said that in illustrating these tangles, Into You is tougher, slower, less interested in easy laughs and much more patiently talky than you’d expect it to be, and even when that “talk” reads clearly as lines straight off the self-help page, the film’s unflinching attention to paranoia and misery is, in its way, refreshing. But it might be easier to take Into You seriously as a sincere statement on contemporary life and dating rituals if it wasn’t so hard to confuse its imagery with a “Stars — they’re just like US!” spread in US Weekly. There are so many celebrities in this thing that it’s impossible to think of the celestial presences on screen as characters; either each actor has been cast with laser-guided precision for what they best bring, or else there is no acting in this picture whatsoever. And in the case of some of the actors, there’s such a blurring between certain aspects of the character and certain aspects of the persona of the star who plays them, that it almost has to be intentional. Most glaringly: Jennifer Aniston steps out of a Lonely Jen spread and into a plot that has her walking away from her boyfriend of seven years (Ben Affleck, full of the moldability, desperation to please yet reticence to marry that the tabloids would have us believe marked his relationship with Jennifer Lopez). Aniston’s character eventually, improbably gets her happy ending in the final reel, but the bulk of the film is about watching her be alone and miserable while everyone around her tells her there’s something wrong with her because she’s not married. Whatever kind of pleasure it is that people get from consuming that tabloid image of a terminally unlucky-in-love Jennifer Aniston, that pleasure is pumped directly into this film. In fact, throughout Into You, the pleasures offered are not conventionally pleasurable at all. We’ve been talking quite a bit lately about comedies of uncomfortability — films which don’t seek to provoke laughs through “jokes” or traditional laugh lines as much as they seek to provoke squirming, and laughter comes as a by-product of the squirms. Instead of laugh lines, Into You has gasp lines –– scenes continually build up to a narrative revelation or statement of raw honesty that seem designed to elicit an audible intake of air from the audience –– and the laughs come as a by-product of the gasps. Sometimes, as in a scene where Jennifer Connolly’s repressed anger over her husband’s affair comes to the surface, Into You will strain for absolute seriousness for a genuinely uncomfortable length of time, and then break the mood with a single joke, in a “just playin’” concession to the audience. But there’s no greater audience concession than those final-reel happy endings. For much of its running time, Into You is very –– how to put it –– European in its attitudes towards sex, infidelity, and commitment, in that it allows people to be people and to make the mistakes that real people realistically make. And for a while, it seems like the point of the thing is to suck you into the tropes of movie love, only to throw those tropes in your face. But in the end, the cheaters and seducers are punished, and anyone who isn’t on a one-way track to an airtight marriage ends up alone. This screwball dramedy –– in which a plucky girl with bobbed, wavy hair talks fast and moves fast and gets her man in the end –– hews to the exact pattern of the post-Code romance of Classical Hollywood, in which the last few minutes of the film would be devoted to restoring the moral social order torn asunder by working women (career girls and girls of the night alike), economic desparation (represented here by Johansson’s character, who lives in a one-room apartment and wears raggy hair extensions and ill-fitting, ripped jeans which are perhaps suppossed to look sexy, but actually make her look like a street urchin), and the torments of the ego. Into You, of course, doesn’t go for the last-minute turnaround in order to fit to a censorship code –– although today’s romantic films are so homogenously safe in their vision of morality that the Hayes Office could reopen without incident. No, Into You gives everyone sudden magic rosy endings because it understands who its audience is, and that ultimately, that audience doesn’t come to the movies to get their expectations subverted. They don’t want to think about the way the world works, or the way movies work, while sitting in front of that screen; they come to the movies to sink in the fantasy that It Could Happen To Them. He’s Just Not That Into You is smart for what it is, but it refuses to be condescendingly smarter than the people it exists to please. And that makes it even smarter. Originally posted on:SpoutBlog http://www.spout.com/blogs/karina/archive/2009/2/4/40240.aspx Post By: Karina
Post To: Karina on SpoutBlog
Post Date: 2/4/2009 2:02:23 PM
Body: Just over two months ago, Pajamas Media blogger Roger Kimball insisted that the economic picture could not possible be as dire as those mainstream liberal media hysterics wanted us to think. Then last week, Pajamas Media announced that their blog network is going out of business. Lesson learned: he who attempts to undercut the current economic pessimism ends up ironically fucked. That is, unless “he” is talking about Hollywood. The movie industry is thriving so undeniably in this downturn –– Hollywood just wrapped its best January ever at the box office, with theater attendance up over 16% –– that just yesterday the MPAA’s proposed tax credits were thrown out of the economic stimulus package (California senators Barbara Boxer and Dianne Feinstein, no doubt well aware of the longer-tail consequences of the credit crunch on film financing, voted to keep the tax credits in). With the recent successes of mindless escapist fare like Paul Blart: Mall Cop, and the middling box office performance of “serious” Oscar contenders like Milk and Frost/Nixon, the pervasive meme in entertainment media coverage is that, just like during the first (and still the best!) Great Depression, audiences are flocking to the movies to forget their troubles. But the (empty pockets) = (bottomless thirst for cinematic guilty pleasure) equation will really be put to the test by early February’s two high-profile chick-lit-turned-flick releases, Confessions of a Shopaholic (about what happens when a happy-go-lucky credit card abuser gets shamed by love into practicing fiscally responsibility) and He’s Just Not Into You (about what happens when married men allow themselves to be seduced by Scarlett Johansson, whose terrible costuming and hair extensions would suggest the recession has consequences we haven’t yet foreseen — more on that in my review later this week). There seems to be a common wish amongst journalists to make sense of these films (before they’ve even opened, before the audiences have had a chance to embrace or reject what they’re trying to sell) in the context not just of the filmgoing boom of the 1930s, but the substance of Old School depression films themselves. Exhibit A: John Anderson’s review of He’s Just Not That Into You in Variety: …the pic may also be the first contemporary escapist comedy that feels fully aware of its place in the economic vortex. The lushness, the leisure, the vicarious wealth are all balms to soothe our savaged selves as we look away from the news and onto the screen. Given the state of things, such a movie almost seems like an act of charity toward the public. It’s not screwball comedy, but the underlying sentiments are the same. Anderson is not necessarily incorrect, but he fails to mention that the primary tone of the film is fairly grey. There is certainly a fair share of thoughtless lifestyle porn in Into You (there’s one subplot involving a character’s transformation from cheesy real estate loser into even cheesier condo broker to Baltimore’s new-money gays; in another, a couple joke about the “million undocumented workers” who are renovating their fabulous brownstone), but it is not the wacky, high-style romantic comedy that its marketing would suggest. For the most part, it takes the romantic foibles and missteps, angst and agonies of its ensemble almost absurdly seriously. At the risk of giving it too much credit (although I do think it deserves *some* credit), it’s kind of a Husbands and Wives for the US Weekly set, and though the Us Weekly set is certainly a larger, more valuable demo than the Woody Allen set, I wonder what second weekend box office will look like when women start to spread the word that the film’s kind of a bummer. I predict Shopaholic will have an easier time of it. In today’s Los Angeles Times, Claudia Eller notes that “Shopaholic’s theme of overindulgence and unmitigated spending comes just as consumers are tapped out on their credit cards and feverishly pinching pennies,” and frets, “some observers worry that those images may not sit well with potential moviegoers who are having a hard time making ends meet.” She then (reluctantly, it seems) acknowledges that “there is some evidence that people want to see escapist fare to take their minds off their troubles. During the Depression, for example, some of the most popular movies were madcap comedies and musicals like Top Hat, with elegant couples such as Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers decked out to the nines.” I haven’t seen Shopaholic, but from what I know of it, it’s the prototypical Depression fairy tale: under-funded girl lives beyond her means, only to be saved from the gutter by a well-bred love interest (her boss, no less!) The question is, will the easy out-via-improbable romance racket play to a Mall Cop nation? I don’t have the answers! What say you? Originally posted on:SpoutBlog » Karina Longworth
]]>Wed, 04 Feb 2009 19:02:23 GMTKarinaKarina on SpoutBlog2/4/2009 2:02:23 PMJust over two months ago, Pajamas Media blogger Roger Kimball insisted that the economic picture could not possible be as dire as those mainstream liberal media hysterics wanted us to think. Then last week, Pajamas Media announced that their blog network is going out of business. Lesson learned: he who attempts to undercut the current economic pessimism ends up ironically fucked. That is, unless “he” is talking about Hollywood. The movie industry is thriving so undeniably in this downturn –– Hollywood just wrapped its best January ever at the box office, with theater attendance up over 16% –– that just yesterday the MPAA’s proposed tax credits were thrown out of the economic stimulus package (California senators Barbara Boxer and Dianne Feinstein, no doubt well aware of the longer-tail consequences of the credit crunch on film financing, voted to keep the tax credits in). With the recent successes of mindless escapist fare like Paul Blart: Mall Cop, and the middling box office performance of “serious” Oscar contenders like Milk and Frost/Nixon, the pervasive meme in entertainment media coverage is that, just like during the first (and still the best!) Great Depression, audiences are flocking to the movies to forget their troubles. But the (empty pockets) = (bottomless thirst for cinematic guilty pleasure) equation will really be put to the test by early February’s two high-profile chick-lit-turned-flick releases, Confessions of a Shopaholic (about what happens when a happy-go-lucky credit card abuser gets shamed by love into practicing fiscally responsibility) and He’s Just Not Into You (about what happens when married men allow themselves to be seduced by Scarlett Johansson, whose terrible costuming and hair extensions would suggest the recession has consequences we haven’t yet foreseen — more on that in my review later this week). There seems to be a common wish amongst journalists to make sense of these films (before they’ve even opened, before the audiences have had a chance to embrace or reject what they’re trying to sell) in the context not just of the filmgoing boom of the 1930s, but the substance of Old School depression films themselves. Exhibit A: John Anderson’s review of He’s Just Not That Into You in Variety: …the pic may also be the first contemporary escapist comedy that feels fully aware of its place in the economic vortex. The lushness, the leisure, the vicarious wealth are all balms to soothe our savaged selves as we look away from the news and onto the screen. Given the state of things, such a movie almost seems like an act of charity toward the public. It’s not screwball comedy, but the underlying sentiments are the same. Anderson is not necessarily incorrect, but he fails to mention that the primary tone of the film is fairly grey. There is certainly a fair share of thoughtless lifestyle porn in Into You (there’s one subplot involving a character’s transformation from cheesy real estate loser into even cheesier condo broker to Baltimore’s new-money gays; in another, a couple joke about the “million undocumented workers” who are renovating their fabulous brownstone), but it is not the wacky, high-style romantic comedy that its marketing would suggest. For the most part, it takes the romantic foibles and missteps, angst and agonies of its ensemble almost absurdly seriously. At the risk of giving it too much credit (although I do think it deserves *some* credit), it’s kind of a Husbands and Wives for the US Weekly set, and though the Us Weekly set is certainly a larger, more valuable demo than the Woody Allen set, I wonder what second weekend box office will look like when women start to spread the word that the film’s kind of a bummer. I predict Shopaholic will have an easier time of it. In today’s Los Angeles Times, Claudia Eller notes that “Shopaholic’s theme of overindulgence and unmitigated spending comes just as consumers are tapped out on their credit cards and feverishly pinching pennies,” and frets, “some observers worry that those images may not sit well with potential moviegoers who are having a hard time making ends meet.” She then (reluctantly, it seems) acknowledges that “there is some evidence that people want to see escapist fare to take their minds off their troubles. During the Depression, for example, some of the most popular movies were madcap comedies and musicals like Top Hat, with elegant couples such as Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers decked out to the nines.” I haven’t seen Shopaholic, but from what I know of it, it’s the prototypical Depression fairy tale: under-funded girl lives beyond her means, only to be saved from the gutter by a well-bred love interest (her boss, no less!) The question is, will the easy out-via-improbable romance racket play to a Mall Cop nation? I don’t have the answers! What say you? Originally posted on:SpoutBlog » Karina Longworth http://www.spout.com/blogs/spoutblog/archive/2009/2/4/40238.aspx Post By: SpoutBlog
Post To: SpoutBlog on spout.com
Post Date: 2/4/2009 2:01:51 PM
Body: Just over two months ago, Pajamas Media blogger Roger Kimball insisted that the economic picture could not possible be as dire as those mainstream liberal media hysterics wanted us to think. Then last week, Pajamas Media announced that their blog network is going out of business. Lesson learned: he who attempts to undercut the current economic pessimism ends up ironically fucked. That is, unless “he” is talking about Hollywood. The movie industry is thriving so undeniably in this downturn –– Hollywood just wrapped its best January ever at the box office, with theater attendance up over 16% –– that just yesterday the MPAA’s proposed tax credits were thrown out of the economic stimulus package (California senators Barbara Boxer and Dianne Feinstein, no doubt well aware of the longer-tail consequences of the credit crunch on film financing, voted to keep the tax credits in). With the recent successes of mindless escapist fare like Paul Blart: Mall Cop, and the middling box office performance of “serious” Oscar contenders like Milk and Frost/Nixon, the pervasive meme in entertainment media coverage is that, just like during the first (and still the best!) Great Depression, audiences are flocking to the movies to forget their troubles. But the (empty pockets) = (bottomless thirst for cinematic guilty pleasure) equation will really be put to the test by early February’s two high-profile chick-lit-turned-flick releases, Confessions of a Shopaholic (about what happens when a happy-go-lucky credit card abuser gets shamed by love into practicing fiscally responsibility) and He’s Just Not Into You (about what happens when married men allow themselves to be seduced by Scarlett Johansson, whose terrible costuming and hair extensions would suggest the recession has consequences we haven’t yet foreseen — more on that in my review later this week). There seems to be a common wish amongst journalists to make sense of these films (before they’ve even opened, before the audiences have had a chance to embrace or reject what they’re trying to sell) in the context not just of the filmgoing boom of the 1930s, but the substance of Old School depression films themselves. Exhibit A: John Anderson’s review of He’s Just Not That Into You in Variety: …the pic may also be the first contemporary escapist comedy that feels fully aware of its place in the economic vortex. The lushness, the leisure, the vicarious wealth are all balms to soothe our savaged selves as we look away from the news and onto the screen. Given the state of things, such a movie almost seems like an act of charity toward the public. It’s not screwball comedy, but the underlying sentiments are the same. Anderson is not necessarily incorrect, but he fails to mention that the primary tone of the film is fairly grey. There is certainly a fair share of thoughtless lifestyle porn in Into You (there’s one subplot involving a character’s transformation from cheesy real estate loser into even cheesier condo broker to Baltimore’s new-money gays; in another, a couple joke about the “million undocumented workers” who are renovating their fabulous brownstone), but it is not the wacky, high-style romantic comedy that its marketing would suggest. For the most part, it takes the romantic foibles and missteps, angst and agonies of its ensemble almost absurdly seriously. At the risk of giving it too much credit (although I do think it deserves *some* credit), it’s kind of a Husbands and Wives for the US Weekly set, and though the Us Weekly set is certainly a larger, more valuable demo than the Woody Allen set, I wonder what second weekend box office will look like when women start to spread the word that the film’s kind of a bummer. I predict Shopaholic will have an easier time of it. In today’s Los Angeles Times, Claudia Eller notes that “Shopaholic’s theme of overindulgence and unmitigated spending comes just as consumers are tapped out on their credit cards and feverishly pinching pennies,” and frets, “some observers worry that those images may not sit well with potential moviegoers who are having a hard time making ends meet.” She then (reluctantly, it seems) acknowledges that “there is some evidence that people want to see escapist fare to take their minds off their troubles. During the Depression, for example, some of the most popular movies were madcap comedies and musicals like Top Hat, with elegant couples such as Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers decked out to the nines.” I haven’t seen Shopaholic, but from what I know of it, it’s the prototypical Depression fairy tale: under-funded girl lives beyond her means, only to be saved from the gutter by a well-bred love interest (her boss, no less!) The question is, will the easy out-via-improbable romance racket play to a Mall Cop nation? I don’t have the answers! What say you? Originally posted on:SpoutBlog
]]>Wed, 04 Feb 2009 19:01:51 GMTSpoutBlogSpoutBlog on spout.com2/4/2009 2:01:51 PMJust over two months ago, Pajamas Media blogger Roger Kimball insisted that the economic picture could not possible be as dire as those mainstream liberal media hysterics wanted us to think. Then last week, Pajamas Media announced that their blog network is going out of business. Lesson learned: he who attempts to undercut the current economic pessimism ends up ironically fucked. That is, unless “he” is talking about Hollywood. The movie industry is thriving so undeniably in this downturn –– Hollywood just wrapped its best January ever at the box office, with theater attendance up over 16% –– that just yesterday the MPAA’s proposed tax credits were thrown out of the economic stimulus package (California senators Barbara Boxer and Dianne Feinstein, no doubt well aware of the longer-tail consequences of the credit crunch on film financing, voted to keep the tax credits in). With the recent successes of mindless escapist fare like Paul Blart: Mall Cop, and the middling box office performance of “serious” Oscar contenders like Milk and Frost/Nixon, the pervasive meme in entertainment media coverage is that, just like during the first (and still the best!) Great Depression, audiences are flocking to the movies to forget their troubles. But the (empty pockets) = (bottomless thirst for cinematic guilty pleasure) equation will really be put to the test by early February’s two high-profile chick-lit-turned-flick releases, Confessions of a Shopaholic (about what happens when a happy-go-lucky credit card abuser gets shamed by love into practicing fiscally responsibility) and He’s Just Not Into You (about what happens when married men allow themselves to be seduced by Scarlett Johansson, whose terrible costuming and hair extensions would suggest the recession has consequences we haven’t yet foreseen — more on that in my review later this week). There seems to be a common wish amongst journalists to make sense of these films (before they’ve even opened, before the audiences have had a chance to embrace or reject what they’re trying to sell) in the context not just of the filmgoing boom of the 1930s, but the substance of Old School depression films themselves. Exhibit A: John Anderson’s review of He’s Just Not That Into You in Variety: …the pic may also be the first contemporary escapist comedy that feels fully aware of its place in the economic vortex. The lushness, the leisure, the vicarious wealth are all balms to soothe our savaged selves as we look away from the news and onto the screen. Given the state of things, such a movie almost seems like an act of charity toward the public. It’s not screwball comedy, but the underlying sentiments are the same. Anderson is not necessarily incorrect, but he fails to mention that the primary tone of the film is fairly grey. There is certainly a fair share of thoughtless lifestyle porn in Into You (there’s one subplot involving a character’s transformation from cheesy real estate loser into even cheesier condo broker to Baltimore’s new-money gays; in another, a couple joke about the “million undocumented workers” who are renovating their fabulous brownstone), but it is not the wacky, high-style romantic comedy that its marketing would suggest. For the most part, it takes the romantic foibles and missteps, angst and agonies of its ensemble almost absurdly seriously. At the risk of giving it too much credit (although I do think it deserves *some* credit), it’s kind of a Husbands and Wives for the US Weekly set, and though the Us Weekly set is certainly a larger, more valuable demo than the Woody Allen set, I wonder what second weekend box office will look like when women start to spread the word that the film’s kind of a bummer. I predict Shopaholic will have an easier time of it. In today’s Los Angeles Times, Claudia Eller notes that “Shopaholic’s theme of overindulgence and unmitigated spending comes just as consumers are tapped out on their credit cards and feverishly pinching pennies,” and frets, “some observers worry that those images may not sit well with potential moviegoers who are having a hard time making ends meet.” She then (reluctantly, it seems) acknowledges that “there is some evidence that people want to see escapist fare to take their minds off their troubles. During the Depression, for example, some of the most popular movies were madcap comedies and musicals like Top Hat, with elegant couples such as Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers decked out to the nines.” I haven’t seen Shopaholic, but from what I know of it, it’s the prototypical Depression fairy tale: under-funded girl lives beyond her means, only to be saved from the gutter by a well-bred love interest (her boss, no less!) The question is, will the easy out-via-improbable romance racket play to a Mall Cop nation? I don’t have the answers! What say you? Originally posted on:SpoutBlog http://www.spout.com/members/0/tags/love/MemberTagFilms.aspxlove
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