HER Film Review

I finally got around to watching 'Her,' starring Joaquin Phoenix, the voice of Scarlett Johansson, with smattering appearances of Chris Pratt, Olivia Wilde, Rooney Mara, Kristen Wiig, Amy Adams and the like.

It was written and directed by Spike Jonze.

The story revolves around Theodore (Phoenix), an emotionally handicapped, lonely man who lost his wife, meandering through life doing what single men do. Yes. Along the way he buys this operating system for his pocket computer, voiced by Johansson, that is the leading edge technology of operating systems, a self-learning OS. Whoa, quite self-learning. It names itself Samantha.

The lonely man starts interacting with Samantha via an ear-piece (No, he's not an Avenger), but as the film develops, you can see that this borders on an obscenely unhealthy level. Hell, later on, Samantha finds an 'OS sex surrogate' so Ted can have a body to fulfill too.

He carries the pocket computer everywhere, making sure the camera points out his pocket so Samantha can see everywhere they go, and he even puts her on the bedside table so she can see him when he's sleeping.


His relationship with his computer goes to the point of saying he's dating someone and calls it/her his girlfriend.Yea, it's like a Facebook addicted user... can't put it down.

And it does not help that Ted's friend, Amy (Adams), has her own OS, like Sam and goes on and on about her OS.

THIS IS NOT A MOVIE TO WATCH WITH THE KIDS AROUND. Unless you want to start answering uncomfortable questions about a single man surfing the web, hooking up with online women for one-night phone sex stands, hook ups with dinner dates, OS/phone sex where Ted and Sam have a heated conversation and Sam gets into the premise of having a body and responds to Ted's verbal interaction like an experienced phone-sex operator... yep, those kinds of question.

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HER movie rental

The film is a slow-burn of a story, watching the inner dialog going on between Ted and  Sam and others in his life.

Before you diss on the film from my words, know that the film made $42M worldwide, won an Oscar and 103 other awards, with 128 other nominations. So there's that.

Here's a weird footnote: "The Academy" dissed on Johansson getting any kind of nomination because she did not portray a person.  "Hollywood" can be funny sometimes.

As the story evolves, we watch Ted go through the emotional battle of learning how to deal with life, his friends, and reviewing his relationship with his "girlfriend." The weirdest part was following the story of his dealing with the OS sex surrogate. Very weird.

Though the 'sex' they have is highly energized with Johansson's voice.

Of course it was almost effing funny when Ted gets into an argument with both of them, the surrogate and the OS. Again, weird. But complicated.

When I first started watching 'Her' the first act moved at such a pace that the first act felt like it was the entire movie. But if you get into his head, his story, it can be compelling to see what happens to this sorry lot of a man who can only be comfortable with his pocket (computer.)

The true challenge confronted in the film is how these people with this OS can't deal with humanity and/or if they can truly have a relationship with a self-aware OS. Is that a relationship? Can this evolving, learning OS who mimics humanity, can represent an real relationship or not? ANd how can these relationships can evolve?

The big question about this is that it is an OS. An OS installed on many other computers.

The IMDb user ratings score for the movie hit an 8/10, and despite being oddly disturbing, it hits on many levels of life and the story is deeply involved, there's that. Watching it through to the end makes the story complete, on many levels. I would have been mixed about having dropped money on seeing this at the theater, but it's quite the engaging ride.

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