Guest Blog: He's Just Not That Into You

It takes a village to run a movie blog. Seriously. Just when I think I can't---or won't--go to a certain movie, a friend steps up and does it for me, and agrees to write about it! Here's Wesley Clark on "He's Just Not That Into You"...Hint: He wasn't all that into it, either. -EDR


In a fraternity-basement temple somewhere in Hollywood, a group of men in The Business, upset at the three-dimensional, strong, interesting women in such movies as Happy Go Lucky and Revolutionary Road, were praying to the Misogyny God. And lo, he answered their prayers. “I will give you,” he said, “a devilish entertainment. On the outside it will look like a chick flick, luring women and their dollars from all across the land. Once they are comfortably seated, however, settled back in their chairs in the dark, I will heap them with insults, make them look shallow, devious, and self-centered, and show them to be obsessed with you, my tribe, yea, even unto the least attractive and most boring among you.” And therewithal he delivered unto them a script, and on the cover of the script it was written: “He’s Just Not That Into You.”

Apparently, this is the top-grossing movie in America right now (which makes me wonder how much “change” we’re really in for in the next few years). I can’t give a full review of it, since I eventually walked out, something I almost never do. Suffice it to say that it involves a number of very smart and attractive women, played by a crew of extremely capable actresses, who spend the entire movie thinking of, apparently, nothing else but how to attract and keep a bunch of men with all the appeal, interest, and charisma of a local news anchor.

There’s Gigi (Ginnifer Goodwin), who waits by the phone for days and days (and days), hoping for a call from Conor (Kevin Connolly), with whom she has had one utterly generic date. There’s Beth (Jennifer Anniston), who frets after leaving Neil (Ben Affleck), a man who apparently has no job (although he has a very large boat), and whose explorations of why he doesn’t want to get married after living with Beth for seven years display all the nuance and perceptiveness of a 15-year-old boy. And let us not forget Mary (Drew Barrymore), who, although she is smart, confident, and stylish, just goes all SHAKEY when, egged on by the obligatory crew of gay-man friends, she calls her voicemail to see if last night’s date has left her a message.

Oh, I lie. One of the women (Scarlett Johansson’s Anna) does think about something else. She thinks about how to break up the marriage of Janine (Jennifer Connelly) to the Bud-Light-ad-ready Ben (Bradley Cooper). As the prospect of doing this seems to cause her no anxiety whatever, I suppose she could be called one of the movie’s happy characters. Extra happy, no doubt, that she manages to escape arrest when, having agreed that Ben and she should be “just friends,” she strips naked and jumps into a health-club pool.

The offensiveness of all this – women are not only man-obsessed, incapable of self-direction, hell-bent on marriage, and willing to abase themselves for any dumb jock who happens to pass by, but ruthless and backstabbing, as well – is impossible to overstate. But the movie has more to offer. Dialogue that is often, to put it kindly, daytime-TV-level. Black actresses who are allowed on screen just long enough to do a little “street-talk” vignette about how their men have made them, yes, fat. Some jolly ribaldry on the subject of Beth not being married. And I didn’t even stay for the whole movie.

It all raises some questions. Did the people behind this actually think they were making a “hip” or “modern” film (I know slightly one of the people who wrote the book that inspired it, and she seems, anyway, like a normal, interesting woman)? Did they INTEND to insult half of the human race? Is this some sort of real-life version of “In the Company of Men,” where a movie acts all fun and funny, only to get its ya-yas by sticking the knife in and twisting it as soon as you let your guard down? Was it made by a bunch of small, bitter, angry men? Was it made, maybe, by the driving instructor from Happy Go Lucky?

Mostly what I want to know is, what were all those actresses thinking? Drew Barrymore, for God’s sake – she’s a funny, quirky, go-your-own way sort of presence. Was she really willing to become a spokeswoman for idiocy for a few million dollars? My only hope is that the original version of the script was substantially different, and more intelligent, than the finished product. Otherwise, I’m going to begin believing that women out there – or, at least, actresses – really are that desperate.

Well, that’s about it. Boring, conventional, embarrassing, insulting. Just what you’ve come to expect from America’s top films. I’ll be curious to hear if anyone found anything to like in it.

-Wesley Clark