Review: HER

HER  (ROMANTIC COMEDY)
4 out of 4 stars
Directed by Spike Jonze
Starring: Joaquin Phoenix, Scarlett Johansson (voice), Amy Adams, Rooney Mara, Olivia Wilde, Chris Pratt, Portia Doubleday, Matt Letscher
Rated R for language, sexual content and brief graphic nudity.
Verdict:  Spike Jonze's HER is a romantic comedy that fires on all cylinders; super-smart and introspective, riotously funny, touching, ever-interesting and fantastic.  Both highly ambitious and accessible, it even manages to make Joaquin Phoenix likable again.
YOU MAY ENJOY HER IF YOU LIKED:
BEING JOHN MALKOVICH  (1999)
DON JON  (2013)
ETERNAL SUNSHINE OF THE SPOTLESS MIND (2004)
ADAPTATION  (2002)
WHERE THE WILD THINGS ARE  (2009) 

Spike Jonze has crafted a thing of great beauty in HER, which he wrote, directed and produced.  It's a tender and intelligent romantic story that also asks what it would be like if people's butt-holes were in their armpits.
Jonze is probably best known as the co-creator of the MTV television show, Jackass!, and for directing philosophical fantasy-comedies like BEING JOHN MALKOVICH and ADAPTATION (both of which he collaborated on with distinctive screenwriter, Charlie Kaufman), as well as his last feature film, WHERE THE WILD THINGS ARE.  MALKOVICH and ADAPTATION are both amazing films, but a lot of their brilliance could be more attributable to their writer, especially when WILD THINGS was relatively disappointing.  It had some really, really great ideas, especially the notion of adapting the famous children's picture book from such an intellectual, philosophical angle,
but it was just too slim on narrative and rarely all that likable.
HER is aggressively likable and thoroughly entertaining, without sacrificing any of the philosophy, emotion or complexity.  It's a story set in the near future.  We're not talking 200 years into the future, like the high-tech metropolis utopias plastered with product placement like we've seen so many times before ever since MINORITY REPORT.  This is a world within reach, where the entire population is perpetually wired in, walking through life with a single ear-bud in place like a Bluetooth, carrying out their internet lives through verbal commands to their operating systems, which access all of a person's digital data.  Just about everything is automated, but otherwise, it's pretty much the contemporary world that we live in.  Fashion has changed a bit too, though, with people turning their collars inside out, and most people wear wool-knit slacks hiked up over their navels.  That's just a side note though.
Theodore Twombly (Joaquin Phoenix) is a lonely social introvert who works at company writing heartfelt letters for people who have trouble expressing their feelings.  His only friend is his disheveled neighbor, Amy (Amy Adams), an ambitious and quirky documentary filmmaker who is going through a divorce from her unsupportive husband, Charles (Matt Letscher).  Brokenhearted over his own divorce from his lifelong sweetheart, Catherine (Rooney Mara), Theodore purchases a state-of-the-art operating system with a personality custom-designed to serve his needs.  The operating system calls herself Samantha (a purely vocal role, performed by Scarlett Johansson).  Samantha is designed with unprecedented artificial emotional intelligence and learning capabilities, and she is filled with optimistic wonder at Theodore's world, which she sees through the camera-endowed pocket screen that he props up in his shirt pocket.  Theodore begins to fall in love with Samantha, and she with him, which introduces all kinds of relationship quirks, such as Samantha's stress at not having a body and doubts over the nature of her own existence, while Theodore has similar stresses, as well has the stigma of being romantically in love with a computer program.
Both an earnest exploration of our modern dependence on our digital lives (including sexual aspects) and a satire of the same, HER is often equal parts heart-rending and inherently humorous.  It's all good and well to consider such a scenario ridiculous, but in the course of the film, there are many examples given for why it's not that ridiculous.  Sometimes it seems like HER is going to take a formulaic romantic comedy route, albeit with a computer in place as one of the main roles, but even while toying with such tropes, it weaves through unexpected but totally satisfying territories. 

Much has been made of Johansson's spectacular voice work that makes up a full-bodied yet disembodied personality, and all of that is deserved, though much credit is also due to Jonze's incredible script, which may very well turn Oscar's head in March at the Academy Awards.  Phoenix, whose career took a bizarre and laughable turn during his 2009-2010 I'M STILL HERE phase, returned in 2012 with an incredible but grotesque performance in Paul Thomas Anderson's THE MASTER.  In HER, he plays a likable romantic lead with all the talent of his best performances, and a knack for deadpan comedy.
The humor in HER is generally of a sweet, gentle sort, but there are also moments of gut-busting hilarity, most of which revolve around the video games of this world.  Despite being somewhat quirky, it's a highly accessible, feel-good film with a beautiful brain.  Released in December 2013 in Los Angeles and New York to qualify for the upcoming Academy Awards, HER has only recently expanded to wide release, but it would certainly have been present on my compilation of favorite movies from 2013.  If only more romantic comedies shared such lofty ambitions and talent.