Her

Starring: Joaquin Phoenix, Scarlett Johansson, Amy Adams, Olivia Wilde & Rooney Mara

Directed by: Spike Jonze

Rating: ★★½

This year, Herwon the Academy Award for Best Screenplay Written Directly for the Screen, and was nominated for five others, including Best Picture.

Her has received overwhelming critical praise and has enamoured almost every reviewer who has seen it.

Except this one.

Theodore is a very lonely man indeed...

Her definitely has a very well written, visually stimulating and thematically provocative first half hour, but as soon as Theodore (Phoenix) has ‘sex’ with his artificially intelligent operating system Samantha (Johansson), Her completely falls apart, mainly because it stretches the audiences’ suspension of disbelief so far that it snaps.

Say hello to Samantha. She's a voice stuck in a machine. And she can have an orgasm.

Which is very annoying. I was on Her’s side. I was really enjoying it. I wanted to continue to enjoy it!

But the idea that a sentient computer could have an orgasm…? I don’t think so. If Theodore jacked off to Samantha’s voice, that’s understandable, but the fact that Samantha can experience sexual pleasure herself is bizarrely stupid. And what makes this moment worse is that it is meant to be oh so ‘deep’ and ‘profound’ and it probably had hipsters and dah-ling  lovey film critics sobbing into their handkerchiefs.

But not me.

The futuristic cityscape enamours both Theodore and the audience...

I thought Herwas meant to be a love film. And up to a point it is. But there are too many glaring issues with Her to ignore; the ‘romance’ between Theodore and Samantha being one of them.

The most potent problem with the movie is that it is, in essence, a radio drama. And it would be a very good, very interesting radio drama too. But Her definitely isn’t a movie. Listening to conversations between a man and his computer for over two hours isn’t thrilling viewing. And yes, there are some great shots and the futuristic cityscape looks awesome. But this isn’t what Her is about. It is meant to be about Theodore falling in love with his machine, and this is hard to get across when there is nothing to represent this visually, except for Joaquin gawping at the screen. So basically, Her should have been produced for radio, or at least altered so that the audience has something to watch instead of endless close-ups of Joaquin’s face.

Theodore likes starring at things. A lot.

The other massive problem with Her for me is that it is essentially two different movies put together. We have the main plot, in which Theodore lives in a near-future reality and is so desperately lonely that he falls in love with his operating system, and the second which is about his broken relationship with his wife Catherine (Mara) and blossoming romance with Amy (Adams). And I think I would have preferred watching a romantic drama about Theodore picking himself up after the destruction of his marriage and then putting himself back together.

Theodore and Amy share a moment.

But that isn’t what Herfocuses on. It is instead about a man masturbating to the voice of a computer system. And maybe I’m over simplifying things, but this moment is so hard to get past that I still haven’t been able to.

I really enjoyed how believable the first part's focus on Theodore’s isolation and loneliness was. It was compelling and realistic to think that, in the future, people will stop having relationships with one another and instead have them with artificially created beings. But then the pretentious ‘blackout’ ‘sex’ sequence happens.

We know you're lonely Theodore, but seriously, you need to pull yourself together...

There is a lot of humour that works well, but most of jokes are at Her’s expense as we are laughing at the implausibility of the entire premise. Can you really fall in love with a voice? Maybe if you were so very, very lonely, one might. But this isn’t really established in the world of the movie. Theodore is meant to be a nerdy loner, and yet he’s married to Rooney Mara, is best friends with Amy Adams and dates Olivia Wilde. He’s surrounded by beautiful women, and yet he’s a nebbish loser who ‘can’t connect’ with people. And he looks like a movie star.

Oh Theodore. I don't think we quite believe that you're an unattractive loser just because you wear thick glasses...

This makes his whining and moaning all the more annoying, and for me, Her became a less annoying version of (500) Days of Summer- a limp dicked pathetic man sobbing over being hurt by a woman who isn’t worth his time or effort. He is his own worst enemy, because he can’t pull himself together and stop being irritatingly wretched.

Oh it’s just so difficult being Joaquin Phoenix and having an amazing job and being surrounded by beautiful women. Of course the audience sympathises with you, because you have it so hard.

Theodore dates Amelia (Wilde), and we're supposed to believe he's a pathetic nerd?

Olivia Wilde is beautiful and excellent in a very small role, and I think that she should have had a bigger part, which is also true for Amy Adams. Joaquin, overall, gives a mostly solid performance, but unfortunately cycles between realistically understated and annoyingly melodramatic, as does the entire movie.

I also really loved the profession that Theodore has: writing letters on the behalf of other people. This idea was inspired and it’s a shame it wasn’t more of a focal point in the movie.

Theodore can express other peoples' love, but not his own...

In a nutshell, Heris a very pretentious piece of radio cinema that takes itself way too seriously. Although it has some very strong ideas, it ultimately isn’t successful at being either a romantic drama or a thought-provoking think piece. And the ending is so far up its own arse that it begins to defecate out of its own mouth.

Spike Jonze probably thinks that Her takes people to a ‘higher state of consciousness’ just like his operating systems, but sadly, Her is too bland and boring to be entertaining and too superficial and muddled to actually be deep.

Oh Theodore. Starring out of a window isn't going to do anything to help you...

But oh well. He won an Oscar, so clearly everybody else loves Her way more than me. Maybe I just don’t get Her because I haven’t yet evolved to a higher state of being or something equally as conceited as the denouement of this modern ‘masterpiece’.

This is the point where I sing a stupid song, everything fades to black, and then I win an award. Maybe I should go into screenwriting too.

If you can win an Oscar for writing a radio script about a man touching himself to a sentient computer, then anyone can!