Not Bad for High School Couples – He’s Just Not That into You (Spoiler’s Alert)

Well where do I start, I meant to find a sad, meaningful, thought-provoking, poignant, beautiful, sweet and sorrow love legend. And I ended up watching a montage movie similar to Love Actually, only less attractive. I can’t say anything about the cast - Jennifer Aniston, Ben Affleck, Ginnifer Goodwin, Drew Barrymore, Scarlett Johansson, Bradley Cooper, Long Justin – ummmm, very pleasant looking. And since I mentioned Love Actually, I can actually do a little comparison – stories in this film are less interconnected, make way less sense as it does not portray real life but has more of a humorous tinge in them, and have way too many abrupt interruptions in between. All in all, a seemingly good cast with a pretty chaotic choreography, but it does have a few highlights intermittently.

Let’s begin with the roast of the film (so that we can finish with praises and not destroy all your interests in watching it). I am not pleased by the opening narrative. It starts with the nagging fact that if a boy likes you he pisses you off all the time and ends with this – “is it possible that it’s because we’re too scared, and it’s too hard to say that one obvious truth that’s staring everyone in the face: he’s just not that into you”. What is this? Is this a movie script, or a bad public speaking assignment done by a freshman in high school? Posing rhetorical question, really. Drew Barrymore’s character was meaningless and I couldn’t remember what or why she was in the film. They separate the film with completely lunatic narratives that doesn’t really help the development. 

Moving on, this scene of a “dating imbecile” trying to find her true love. Her story is the main thread of the film so I will finish her story first and get back to the rest. The awkwardness is so fake in the film and the over impulsive romance addiction that this girl has is unconvincing. Every once in a while I tuned out of this film, my mind filled with the thought “can this be more fake”. Of course she later randomly meets Justin Long in a bar and he just fell right in love with this uncomfortable, bipolar girl, without knowing it himself. And of course later she confronts him with the fact that he has emotional difficulties to be close to a woman and bam, they fall in love. The most interesting scene is her saying “I’d rather be like me than be like you” out of the blue and enlightens him just with that one sentence and make him realize that he is in love. Such an abrupt turn, Mr. Screenwriter and Mr. Editor, this is how people crash their cars.

The other three relationships are better portrayed, but I won’t go into details. Several things worth watching in this film – Jennifer Connelly’s “desperate housewife” performance as Bradley Cooper’s wife after she found out that he was cheating with Scarlett Johansson. She’s desperate, she wants his love back, she is hurt, she goes insane, and she picks herself up and starts over again. The performance is accurate and in fact, pretty serious in a less serious film like this. Also the storyline of Ben Affleck and Jennifer Aniston was decent, not surprising but it was a straight and narrow line that you can’t miss. It ends in a really sweet and touching ending for those of you who love scenes like that.

 

Both of these storylines can actually be an individual film and portrayed more deeply. But unluckily that did not happen and instead they were meshed into this casserole and dimmed down a lot. I wouldn’t recommend this film if you cannot stand low quality films but if you want to watch it to kill time or you like one particular star I in it, it can’t be that bad.

All pictures retrieved from IMDb