What makes the recent romantic comedy He’s Just Not That Into You so frustrating is that it completely botches what could have been an interesting and entertaining premise. Unfortunately, the movie takes all the conventions we might normally see in a rom-com and slathers them with an insipid, faintly bigoted tone.
Basically, He’s Just Not That Into You tells the story of a bunch of urban professionals and their various pursuits of love. The assorted relationships are complex and intertwined, but not interesting enough to go into here. What actually stands out is how unsympathetic all the characters are. Ginnifer Goodwin’s Gigi, for example, is the axis around which everything else seems to rotate, but she is also a socially retarded stalker. It’s not remotely funny or endearing (though it tries to be), and by the end of the movie I just wanted something really bad to happen to her. To some extent or another, that’s how I actually felt about most of the characters: they’re flat, uninteresting stereotypes that aren’t even fun in a mindless romantic-comedy way.
Still, what makes this particular movie worth mentioning isn’t it’s trite story (which could nevertheless have been interesting), but rather the strangely homogenous world it seems to advocate. In this world almost everyone is white. If they aren’t white they’re probably a construction worker, which also means they’re an undocumented immigrant. Also, everyone is rich and lives in hip, spacious apartments with exposed brick. (Or, when Ben Affleck breaks up with Jennifer Aniston, he luckily has an expensive yacht to live on). Similarly, all the character’s work environments are absurdly cool. Each work place looks like an Ikea ad. At Drew Barrymore’s job, the men can actually walk around with their shirts unbuttoned to their waists. (Don’t get me wrong; I think it’d be cool to work in a place like that, I just am skeptical that such places exist and if they do why are they all in this one movie?)
The main problem with this hyper-cool world is that it leaves a lot of people out while actively marginalizing others. For example, Luis Guzman’s portrayal of Javier was actually one of the more entertaining performances, but he was only on screen for a few minutes (and wasn’t even credited). There are a number of African American actors in the film, but they all have minor roles and work for the more successful white characters. Maybe these casting decisions were made to appeal to some specific audience, but I just kept wondering why the filmmakers didn’t include any non-white actors in their ensemble cast. The ensemble was big enough to do so, and there are many successful actors who don’t identify as white, so it almost seems like an active decision to cut minorities out of the picture.
If the portrayal of minorities in He’s Just Not That Into You is problematic, the way it deals with homosexuality is simply offensive. Like a number of Hollywood productions that have come before, this film seems to think that all gay men are effete, lispy stereotypes that are only good for comic relief. The entire film I kept waiting to be introduced to a major gay character, or at least someone who was complicated and who didn’t fit a stereotype that was forged in 90s sitcoms and was outdated from the beginning. Unfortunately what did happen was that like the film’s racial minorities, homosexuals played insignificant parts and served merely as a foil for more important characters. Thus, in the end, the film’s attempts at diversity only ended up confirming its thesis that rich, white people are the coolest and have all the fun.
He’s Just Not That Into You is, in a round about way, a descendant of Sex and the City, which itself seems to be part of a larger trend to telling stories about cool urbanites and all their hip adventures. Maybe I should be paying more attention to this genre; I think that urban living is culturally attractive and has the potential to be environmentally ethical. However, this film disregarded all of the social benefits of urban living in favor of a strange, homogenous fantasy. If all film might be accused of being fantasy, this film took it to a different level by saying that only white, upper-class, urban professionals get invited to the party.
I really shouldn't even comment, because that movie made me really mad--on various levels, and for many, many reasons. But your post brought to light even more reasons for me to be irritated about it (thank you? lol).
ReplyDeleteI did feel, however, that there was something in the idea, and like you I was not impressed with its execution.