He's Just Not That Into You

I've been seeing trailers for this movie for several months now. I saw that it had what seemed to be a great cast, so I was curious to see how they would all come together. Unfortunately, no matter how awesome the cast was, it wasn't enough to salvage my opinion of this movie.

I can get past the fact that there are seven or eight different plots that one is forced to keep track of. I really don't mind that. I'm a pretty complex thinker, I can keep up. My problem came from the sheer stupidity and lack of common sense found in most, if not all, of the key players.

We begin and end with Ginnifer Goodwin's desperately lovesick optimist who is constantly looking for love and assuming she's found it in just about every single guy she comes across. To me, she's our biggest idiot of the night, but that could just be because I'm a cynic and cannot wrap my mind around the way an optimist operates. The whole time, though, I was just shaking my head at the apparent lack of common sense. She finds a friend in Justin Long (by the way, this was a reunion of sorts as they were both on the TV show Ed), who is a brutally honest cynic who makes it clear to her that these guys that she's seeing are just not that into her.

Next we have the extremely frustrating married couple played by Jennifer Connelly and the guy that played Sack in Wedding Crashers. Sack is the kind of guy who dated this girl for a really long time, then she gave him an ultimatum: get married or break-up. Ladies, don't do that to your boyfriends. If you get to the point that you either want to get married or break-up, just break-up. See, these guys will either feel like a jerk for stringing you along for years without popping the question and then leaving you feeling like you've wasted some of the best years of her life, or they'll give in and marry you, but they'll never be the husband that you want them to be. They'll feel trapped and they'll make you miserable. You won't be able to trust each other and then BAM! he has an affair with Scarlett Johansson. See, that kind of guy is just a jerk all the way around.

Meanwhile, Scarlett is stringing along Entourage's Kevin Connolly, a love-sick puppy dog of a best-guy-friend who wants to be more-than-friends. Here's a hint, pal, never gonna happen. Saw that coming from the start. Connolly is almost obsessively in love with Johansson's character and will do absolutely anything to win her affection. She, on the other hand, uses him to make herself feel better when things are not going well for her. I've been on the receiving end of that kind of hurt. It's not fun. I didn't like it the first time, so I haven't made a return trip down that road, nor do I plan to.

Finally we have Rachel and Daredevil, who have been together for seven years, but he's "against marriage." Or he's against the idea of marriage. Or he's afraid of commitment, even though he adamantly claims to be committed to their relationship. She does the ultimatum thing and he moves out. Probably a good move on his part.

I'm not going to sit here and tell you how all of these different plot threads work themselves out. I can say that I liked the realism of the end of the movie. Some folks got their happily ever after, some didn't. That's the way real life is. Some people find those happy endings, but a lot of us don't.

He's Just Not That Into You is a snapshot of the way relationships work in America today. It's a picture of the way relationships work (I should say don't work) when God is removed from the equation, as He often is. Sitting through that movie and seeing the actions and reactions of the on-screen characters, it left me even more secure in the fact that I'm single and not even remotely interested in looking.

It could be that I didn't like this movie because it was designed to be a movie for women. The guys in that theater were outnumbered about five to one. It was advertised as a date movie, but that implies that a guy would enjoy it. I'll admit, there were a lot of funny moments that guys can identify with, but for the most part, it's really a movie that the ladies would enjoy more on a girls' night out sort of event. Personally, I would have felt really awkward about seeing that movie with a date. All of the situations in the movie would inevitably lead to awkward conversations on the way home.

Anyone else see this? Your thoughts? I just wasn't that into it.