I'm glad we didn't pay to see it. Really disappointing. A loser nerd (Joaquin Phoenix) can't maintain a relationship. He's in process of a divorce and is dragging his feet on signing the papers.
Enter a new operating system (my OS is Windows 7). It's an artificial intelligence OS and it learns. When it first installs, the user is given an option of a voice, male or female. And the fun begins.
Boy meets girl, girl grows and leaves boy. Boy is sad.
The end.
I’m not one to usually pick a movie apart, I’m more interested in being entertained. While this movie has given DH and me lots of things to talk about, I don’t think anything we discussed was in a positive light.
He works for a company with lots of other people, who all make their living writing letters to people for people; think Cyrano de Bergerac. He lives in this beautiful apartment in Los Angeles. A very, very beautiful apartment. Okay, strike one. How does one who writes letters for a living, afford this apartment?
Lonely at night, he tunes into some chat mail and contacts a couple of them. He ends up responding to a “Sexy Kitten” and they have phone sex. He’s really enjoying it until she says “now pick up the dead cat next to the bed and choke me with it”. Seriously. This was in the movie. He continues, she finishes and I’m just sitting there thinking “who comes up with this crap?”
Then, I guess to lay the groundwork that someone left him, are three beat up chairs arranged under a hanging lamp. The only thing that’s missing is the dining room table. I’m sure that there’s supposed to be a symbolism there, but it was lost on me. All I could think was “okay, someone moved out and took the table and left the chairs? Someone moved out and took the table and chairs and all he could replace was three chairs?” Okay, this doesn’t bode well, I’m focusing on the wrong things already. It’s too early to start picking it apart.
Lonely, lonely boy, walking in L.A. he hears an advertisement for a new operating system that learns as it goes. He’s intrigued. He installs it. And when he’s asked for his choice of voice gender, he goes with female (Scarlett Johansson). And as she learns and asks him questions, he falls in love with her.
It was done better in Big Bang Theory with Raj and Siri. Siriously. *lol*
He does have one date with a real woman (Olivia Wilde) who turned out to be a whack-a-doodle by the end of the date.
As they fall in love, she wonders about sex. They have sex in the dark. Pretty intense, but all I could think of was of the phone sex operators. Sex by yourself while talking to someone who’s not there. Like I said, it’s been done before.
He takes her with him most everywhere he goes, putting his little OS machine in his pocket, with a large safety pin so the camera lens can see wherever he’s going. You see “her” seeing things for the first time, taking it all in, learning, growing…
Oh, sure, he questions this odd relationship, is it wrong, should he end it, but his friends say they don’t see anything wrong with something that makes you happy. Because by this time, quite a few people were in relationships with this great new operating system. So, it continues until her “brain” power outgrows his and she moves on.
I had no empathy for any of the characters, found them all cold and unlikeable, I couldn’t connect on any level with any of them.
Maybe I didn’t “get” the movie because I’m not as attached to my tablet/PC/phone as the people in this movie were. I dunno, I don’t really care.
After the movie, Brian laughed when I said “well, it’s one movie I won’t be adding this to the Netflix queue”.
Then we came home, watched an episode of Big Bang, then watched Person of Interest. A far more entertaining tale of artificial intelligence.
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