Reviews

Review: He's Just Not That Into You

Reduces both men and women to shrill stereotypes

By PETER KEOUGH | February 4, 2009

0.0 Stars

VIDEO: The trailer for He's Just Not That Into You

And why isn't he? Could it be because you're needy, nagging, and possibly psychotic? And why are you into him, if he's insensitive and deceitful and has unpleasant red fur growing on his pasty legs?

And why will women be flocking to a film that reduces both men and women to shrill stereotypes designed to turn us all into consumers of the items paraded in the film's product placement? Ken Kwapis adapts the book that was inspired by a line in a TV series into a movie that runs 132 minutes. Bradley Cooper and Jennifer Connelly play a couple who are married but not happy.

Ben Affleck and Jennifer Aniston play a couple who are happy but not married. Single women played by Ginnifer Goodwin, Scarlett Johansson, and Drew Barrymore suffer from varying degrees of clinginess; Justin Long and Kevin Connolly play variations on macho shitheads. Moral: boorish men are punished, crazy women are rewarded, and happiness is a diamond ring.

Related: Review: State of Play, Review: Whip It, Review: Extract, More

Review: State of Play
Support for print journalism is coming from an unexpected source: Russell Crowe.
Review: Whip It
Add a dash of the sad beauty contests and kooky, dysfunctional family of Little Miss Sunshine to a helping of the bogus hipness and overexposed star of Juno and whip it good and you get an idea of why Drew Barrymore's directorial debut falls flat as a sappy soufflé.
Review: Extract
I'm hard-pressed to say, though, whether Extract is a significant leap forward for Judge in terms of story or just not as funny as his earlier work.
Review: Everybody's Fine
You'll be forgiven if you mistake Robert De Niro's face for Robert Young's next to Kate Beckinsale's, Drew Barrymore's, and Sam Rockwell's on the poster for Kirk ( Waking Ned Devine ) Jones's remake of Stanno tutti bene .
Review: La Danse: Le Ballet de L'Opéra de Paris
Frederick Wiseman's documentary is a love letter to Paris, to the Palais Garnier opera house (the Bastille gets a cameo), and the Paris Opera Ballet.
Review: Four Seasons Lodge
Andrew Jacobs's documentary is a poignant portrait of a Jewish summer community in the Catskills (one of a few where once there'd been hundreds) peopled almost entirely by elderly concentration-camp survivors.
Review: Irene in Time
Luckless in love, Irene (Tanna Frederick) wants to "find a guy like my daddy." Her father, she says (over and over and over), "was really magical." Truth be told, her absent dad doesn't seem like that great a guy.
Review: The Slammin' Salmon
Here's how the shit version of Waiting likely came to be: the Broken Lizard boys (David Heffernan directs) thought the concept of a boxing-champ-turned-Miami-restaurateur was funny, and they wrote and shot a major motion picture without bothering to design a plot.
Review: Invictus
Poetry, muses Nelson Mandela (Morgan Freeman) in a reflective moment in Invictus , consists only of words, yet it can inspire perseverance and greatness beyond our own expectations of ourselves. Sport, similarly, consists of oversized, overpaid athletes pounding one another in simulated combat, but it's also a form of poetry.
Review: Armored
In view of its credentials, Armored should be a lay-up.
Review: Me and Orson Welles
With Orson Welles, it's all in the voice — which over the course of four decades could sell anything from a Martian invasion to Paul Masson wine.
Less

Topics: Reviews , Celebrity News, Entertainment, Movie Stars, More

HTML Prohibited

Add Comment

Today's Event Picks

[WORDS] "Three Days Before the Shooting" Release at the Harvard Book Store

Plus 1 more >>

ARTICLES BY PETER KEOUGH

REVIEW: EDGE OF DARKNESS | February 05, 2010
A new genre is emerging in which aging A-list actors play fathers off on a rampage to rescue their daughters or avenge their deaths.

REVIEW: FROZEN | February 03, 2010
A storm is coming, the girl has to pee, and then things get much worse.

KAREN SCHMEER: 1970-2010 | February 02, 2010
Karen Schmeer, the brilliant local film editor whose work on Errol Morris's documentary The Fog of War helped win it the Best Documentary Oscar in 2004, died January 29 in a tragic accident, struck by a getaway car as she was crossing a street in Manhattan. She would have turned 40 on February 20.

IS THERE 'HOPE' IN HOLLYWOOD? | January 29, 2010
Buoyed by President Barack Obama's campaign slogan, many had hopes for change after his election.

REVIEW: WAITING FOR ARMAGEDDON | January 27, 2010
Much scarier than 2012 is this documentary about the death grip that fundamentalist religious groups have on American politics.

See all articles by: PETER KEOUGH

Most Viewed

Most Emailed

IMPEACH JOHN ROBERTS
It is time for an enterprising and courageous member of the US House of Representatives to file articles of impeachment against the chief justice of the United States Supreme Court, John Roberts. The charge: lying under oath.

REVIEW: DEAR JOHN
"We're sitting here . . . and we're talking, but nobody's actually saying anything."

POOR RECEPTION
The right loves to rant against the "liberal-media elite," but there's one key media sector where the conservative id reigns supreme: talk radio.

V66 REVISITED
A new film looks fondly back on 'the poor man's MTV'

HE'S SO INSECURE IT'S MAKING ME ILL
Sounds like someone's in the market for a new mommy.

THE WAR OVER PEACE
In the early infancy of this five-week-old year, Boston has been rocked by four homicides and 10 non-fatal shootings. By the time this goes to print, there may well be more.

POOR RECEPTION
The right loves to rant against the "liberal-media elite," but there's one key media sector where the conservative id reigns supreme: talk radio.

IMPEACH JOHN ROBERTS
It is time for an enterprising and courageous member of the US House of Representatives to file articles of impeachment against the chief justice of the United States Supreme Court, John Roberts. The charge: lying under oath.

DAN’S PLACE
We didn't notice any grizzlies or cougars as road kill on our trek to Dan's Place, though we kept our eyes peeled there in the wilds of West Greenwich.

SQUIGGLES AND LINES
The eponymous directors of Alonzo King Lines Ballet and the Mark Morris Dance Group both came from backgrounds in modern dance with sprinklings of other styles, and they both subsequently invented movement vocabularies to serve their choreographic ideas.

HOT TOPICS

John Cusack , Sidney Lumet , Al Gore , David Cronenberg , Julien Temple , Michael Clayton , Paul Greengrass , George Clooney , Paris Hilton , David Lynch

Reviews

Review: He's Just Not That Into You

Review: The Last Station

Review: Edge Of Darkness

Review: 44 Inch Chest

Review: Frozen

Review: Dear John