He’s Just Not That Into You (2008)

Directed by: Ken Kwapis | 130 minutes | comedy, drama, romance | Actors: Ginnifer Goodwin, Jennifer Connelly, Scarlett Johansson, Jennifer Aniston, Ben Affleck, Drew Barrymore, Justin Long, Bradley Cooper, Kevin Connolly, Sasha Alexander, Kris Kristofferson, Leonardo Nam, Cory Hardrict, Wilson Cruz, Justin Rodgers Hall, Hedy Burress Brandon Keener, Brooke Bloom, Peter OMeara, Corey Pearson, Alex Dodd, Rod Keller, Stephen Jared, Traycee King, Alex Spencer, Morgan Lily, Carmen Perez, Jocelin Donahue, Tam Nguyen, Pamela Fischer, Karmyn Tyler, Alia Rhiana Eckerman, Tina Kapousis, Joan M. Blair, Kristen Faye Hunter, Eve Curtis, Erik David, Trenton Rogers, Keith Moyer, Douglas Barcellos, Josh Shideler

Ben Affleck is back in a movie! He had taken the director’s chair with the quite successful ‘Gone Baby Gone’ (2007) and his last role was in 2006’s ‘Smokin’ Aces’, a lesser-known action hit. Did he also take acting lessons in the meantime? Perhaps with his younger brother Casey, who won many awards and an Oscar nomination for his phenomenal role in ‘The Assasination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford’. And it has paid off. In ‘He’s Just Not That into You’, Ben shows himself as an actor more mature than ever. He plays his part with two feet on the ground and comes across as focused. Yet he also remains a pretty face, who (in this film) goes to live on his boat when his love affair with Beth (Jennifer Aniston) has come to a dead end.

Are only beautiful, quite wealthy and intelligent people involved in these kinds of romantic adventures? Yes, in this movie it is. They have a lot of dates, go to bed with a lot of different people, because apparently they have women or men to choose from. Is that realistic? Even the loser-esque girl who can’t get a man on because she obsessively stalks her new potential lover after every date and can’t spend a second without her mobile phone at the ready, is sexually lacking. This girl, Gigi, played by Ginnifer Goodwin, is undoubtedly the comic relief in this relationship story, which is called comedy and owes that classification not to many jokes, but to the light tone and the quite perfect people. We see no real ugliness, we see no real insecurity and doubt, no real, deep pain and/or misery. So it’s still a romantic comedy.

Gigi stands out a bit. Her behavior is a bit exaggerated and the turnaround is a bit too easy. The criticism doesn’t go any further than that. Yes, it is all a bit lighthearted, but certainly not empty and superficial. The story is pretty well put together, with the lines of the different characters – there is actually no real main character – flowing into each other nicely and you really get the intended feeling that we are all in the same boat. The lessons of life are well placed in the context of the present. Lesson one: there are no rules. Everything is temporary, how long you never know in advance, letting go is difficult and going for someone is a choice and you have to make it, otherwise it will never work out. a

All these ideas come from the 2005 book of the same name, which the film is based on, praised by Oprah Winfrey. Then you know that. Pretty modern views and they are presented without judgment. Except at the end, because then you suddenly get the feeling that the makers have quite an opinion about people who try it on their own, or people who have committed the misstep of adultery. Marriage suddenly seems sacred. Oh well, Hollywood will never change, we’ll just have to accept that. The film is long for a romantic drama/comedy, but the more than two hours don’t even feel too long. So another plus.