Romantic traffic jam

Self-help book turned romcom He’s Just
Not That Into You takes an ambitious look
at modern love, with mixed results

GIRL SHLOCK: Scarlett Johansson and Drew Barrymore

by MALCOLM FRASER

A romantic comedy based on a popular self-help book by a couple of Sex in the City writers sounds like… well, a polarizing thing. If, like me, you’d expect a total nightmare, the film turns out to be nowhere near as bad as you might have suspected. For the romcom crowd, insofar as I can interpret their tastes, I’d suspect the results of He’s Just Not That Into You are mixed.

The main character (almost by default in the multi-character, subplot-stuffed narrative) is Gigi (Ginnifer Goodwin), a young woman who’s perpetually single and unlucky in love, largely due to her inability to read fairly obvious rejection signals. One night after the latest dating disaster, she comes across bartender and ladies’ man Alex (Justin Long), who takes pity on her enough to lay down some reality-check wisdom straight out of the self-help tome.

Their story weaves through a fairly complicated web of break-ups, marriages, infidelities and unrequited loves, with a remarkably star-studded cast including Jennifer Connelly, Scarlett Johansson, Ben Affleck, Drew Barrymore and Jennifer Aniston (cast, with ill-conceived self-reflexivity, as a woman dumped by her boyfriend who has to deal with everyone’s pity).

The film suffers from a fundamental schism. On one hand, as its title and source suggest, it’s intended to disabuse women of their long-held dating delusions. On the other, a romantic comedy is usually intended to propagate exactly those delusions, in the form of overly perfect men and dreamy relationships. The film tries to have it both ways—or, to give it the benefit of the doubt, you could argue that it’s portraying modern love in all its realism and complexity. But while the story is admirably multi-dimensional and unpredictable, its shooting, editing and production design are all as generically stylized as a mediocre TV drama.

Ultimately, aside from the titular insight, the romance lessons here are pretty conventional: women want men to be sensitive but strong, men are scared of commitment while women want marriage and children, and so on. Watching the materialistic, obsessive women and narcissistic men onscreen, I kept thinking: does this truly reflect the society we live in? And if so, is there another one I can move to?

HE’S JUST NOT THAT INTO YOU OPENS
THIS FRIDAY, FEB. 6