I have to respect He’s Just Not That Into You for sheer chutzpah: it takes a pair to spend ninety-plus minutes building the case that there is no such thing as a happy ending, before giving your audience precisely that. In fact, I might go so far as to call the movie a work of sadistic genius.
The central tenet is simple: you are not the exception, you are the rule. That girl — you know, your cubicle-mate’s cousin’s friend? — whose philandering man-child of a husband finally turned over a new leaf? She is the exception. But you (you and everyone you know) are the rule.
There’s a liberating quality to this revelation. Suddenly, you’re freed from the Hollywood-imposed dream of a Mr. (or, more rarely, Mrs.) Right inevitably coming along. What a blunt, refreshing, straight-talking little movie! (You think, 75 minutes in.) But then, somewhere along the way, director Ken Kwapis pulls the switch. You’re not sure where it happens exactly, but there’s a point at which you shift from a satisfied, cynical smirk to a hapless, wet-eyed smile. The good guys get what’s coming to them, and the bad guys do, too. The credits roll. And you walk out thinking: “Maybe, someday…”
by Eva Holland | Source: 35mm Print
17 Feb 2009 8:35 PM | Comments (7)
Can someone please tell me when it became cool/hip/edgy to like the taste of shit? Or has it always been this way?
Um. Not sure if the metaphorical shit-eating here is the female characters in the movie consistently chasing after assholes, or me liking the movie?
If the latter, I’m not aiming to be cool/hip/edgy. I was trying to have some fun with this log entry, but I’ve got a long track record of liking this particular type of movie (ask my mom) and, all edgy/hip irony aside, I actually think this is a pretty well-executed example of the genre, for reasons we can discuss if you’d like.
If the former, yes, it’s always been this way.
Eva,
I myself like the taste of shit sometimes, especially in its rom-com flavors, and I kind of enjoyed this film. But I think Lori might be saying the film is sexist, and if so I totally agree.
My big problem with this movie was not the out-of-nowhere happy-ending (which you’re right is hypocritical, but also of course completely predictable) but the anti-exception philosophy in the first place. To me the film sort of seems like it’s trying to be the anti-Sex and the City: it’s against the tendency of women to overpsychologize/rationalize sexual and romantic relationships; it’s saying relationships are not like that, you should just trust your instincts and not overthink it. I guess that’s fine, if a little anti-intellectual, but I don’t like how it goes from that to the idea that there are “rules” in the first place. To me this premise seems doubly sexist, demeaning both (heterosexual) women and men at the same time. Because not only are the “rules” to which women are rarely exceptions totally imposed by men, but it sort of implies that men just blindly follow rules Ñ that they don’t think and strategize and negotiate their way through attractions and romantic relationships just as much as women do. So not only does the film give the men all the power, it insults them by assuming that they wield it unthinkingly. This is one of the worst aspects of the anti-feminist backlash: the premise that men really want sex to be simple and straightforward and primal, and it’s women who make everything overcomplicated.
However! How ’bout that Ginnifer Goodwin!
Like Eva and Evan, I have a weak spot for rom-coms and one of the major reasons I went to see He’s Just Not That Into You is that I’m always intrigued by films of this form that run over two hours. As it turned out, the classification romantic comedy is imprecise for this amalgam that skews more toward melodrama and pop sociology. Initially the film seems quite determined to stick to its sociological roots with its imperfect relationships, verbose dialogue and (staged) direct address interstitials. But any lingering sociological inquiry is negated in the final ten minutes in which the preceding material is redressed to be merely the first two parts of a classical Hollywood three act structure in which love is declared, lips are locked and differences are put aside.
It all makes for a strong testament to the powers of cinematic conventions and the importance of endings. Even though there’s very little to enjoy and nothing I would call romantic about the first 7/8ths of the movie, by the time the end credits roll (with an assist by The Cure), moviegoers walk out with a smile on their face and strong enough word of mouth to propel the film’s box office in the vicinity of the $100 million plateau. Yes, the film comments on its third act reversal via a disembodied narrator but this bid for self-reflexivity doesn’t take toll of the way it fundamentally reverses the rule/exception paradigm outlined by the book.
Moreover, I loved the way the film’s most satisfying union (Ginnifer Goodwin is the only one who bothers to create a character, the other performers are fine just being mouthpieces for sociological mumbo jumbo) is scored to the mournful strains of Keane’s “Somewhere Only We Know” — a song that is resolutely about breaking up. Yet, I think it would be too generous to attribute this as a demonstration of subtle irony on the part of the filmmakers.
Wow, who knew a movie spawned by a self-help book spawned by a single line of dialogue in a Sex and the City episode could stir up such thoughtful discussion!
Good points, Evan, re: sexism. Though I think you could argue that just about every rom-com ever made falls into the exact trap you’ve described (of being sexist towards both genders, really) and that it’s simply more obvious in Not That Into You thanks to the explicit “advice” style of the movie (as opposed to all those flicks that just shape our gender expectations subconsciously).
Stephen – I missed that Keane reference, thanks for pointing it out.
How ’bout that Ginnifer Goodwin, indeed! And hey, Ben Affleck is still totally adorable in his advancing age, too.
I just didn’t like Justin Long in the movie. Period.
Eva, I very much enjoy your so refreshingly succinct reviews, and so far agree with you 98% of the time — BWAH HA HA!
Thanks, Marianne!
Lori
17 February 2009
7:10 PM