Her (**½)

Directed by: Spike Jonze

Starring: Joaquin Phoenix, Scarlett Johansson, Amy Adams, Rooney Mara, Olivia Wilde, Chris Pratt, Matt Letscher, Sam Jaeger, Luka Jones, Kristen Wiig, Bill Hader, Portia Doubleday, Soko, Brian Cox

Seen: February 22^nd 2014

**½ Out of ****

Her is a strange, strangely entertaining, and off-putting movie all in one. It’s interesting to watch, but it gets too much well before the end credits. Spike Jonze has made a movie featuring a sanitised future landscape that I’m not entirely sure I look forward to with a bleak outlook regarding human interaction and relationships. Her is interesting, somewhat entertaining and even funny, but there is too much that is such an obviously possible follow-on from where we are today for it to not also be a bit of a scary portend of what could come.

In an uncomfortably close 2025, Theodore (Phoenix) works at beautifulhandwrittenletters.com, which doesn’t celebrate beautiful handwritten letters, but writes them for clients who can’t or won’t write their own letters to each other. Yes, couples use this service for love letters, outsourcing their communication and even feelings. Theodore is introverted and lives alone, between himself and the screen of his mobile phone, with a Siri-like interface. When the news headlines promise something provocative, Theodore investigates further, but mostly his phone reads him his emails, his news, his messages. Theodore is about to finalise his divorce from Catherine (Mara), and in his lonely state he purchases a new operating system, one that can talk and evolve from what it observes in the life of its owner – from mails, photos, messages… anything. This OS soon starts to seem to Theodore like a person in its own, or shall I say her own right, as Theodore installs it, Samantha (Johansson), with a female voice.

Her starts with flashbacks to happier times for Theodore and Catherine, but over time shifts to Theodore getting more enamoured with Samantha, and he withdraws from the outside world, only foraging there occasionally to visit with friends Amy (Adams) and Charles (Letscher), or to go on a date with Amelia (Wilde) when Samantha persuades him. Amy and Charles aren’t doing well, and get divorced. Theodore is however so in love with his OS that he doesn’t see the opportunity of Amy right there. They used to date in college, but now see each other only as good friends. They would rather grow relationships with OS’s than each other. Theodore and Samantha’s relationship grows more, and it goes so far that Samantha is willing to attempt arranging for a surrogate human to physically consummate their relationship. Theodore gets confused however, from this surrogate appointment as well as from Samantha introducing him to another OS, moulded as British philosopher Alan Watts (Cox), and things start slipping.

Her is interesting to say the least, and taken as commentary on our current world, our current way of interaction with it and each other, it is devastating to see this mirror held up in front of humanity. The scenery and cinematography is very sparse, and I felt myself wondering where they possibly found these sterile-looking cities (turns out it’s Shanghai). Overwhelmingly the feel of Her is clinical, much like a new, not-yet-used/personalised OS. The technology looks sort of old, but the processing power under it all must be relatively potent.

Phoenix is really good, he is a socially awkward and shy guy from scene one. Johansson’s voice work is impressive, making Samantha sound like a real person. Rooney Mara embodies both romantic bliss and a terrifying ex-wife, while I can’t remember ever having seen Amy Adams look so glamour-less, but still sweet. The dialogue is interesting and flowing, but produces a jarring obscenity every now and then, derailing the sweetness of the movie far too often, with a few similar visual gut-punches also thrown in for some sort of ‘measure’ (I see no use in showing the viewer flashes of a naked pregnant lady, even in this context).  Eventually the movie goes on for far too long, and what was a novel idea is ruined by the aforementioned obscenities as well as the labouring final act.

Her could have been great, but too much juvenile interjections and a dwindling ending ruins it, takes what could have been a sweet movie and stains it unpleasantly.