In Which Text Messaging Ruined Dating But So Does This Movie
Wednesday, February 11, 2009 at 5:54AM 
He’s Just Not That Into You
by Sarah LaBrie
I wanted to not hate this movie because hating it seemed too easy and because the preview wasn’t entirely unfunny and because the author of the book it’s based on wrote one of my favorite psychological treatises of all time, "It’s Called A Breakup Because It’s Broken” which, look, shut up.
A few minutes in I gave up and started coming up with titles that maybe would have been more appropriate:
He’s Just Not That Into Also Scarlett Johannsen Has Breasts
OMG! Girls! They Just Don’t Know When To STFU, Right?!
Scarlett Johanssen Boobs! Let Me Show You Them!
Drew Barrymore Is In This Movie We’re Not Sure Why Either
Jennifer Aniston Takes A Wife
sorry girls, this will never happen to you in a million years
I think I might accidentally be this film’s target audience. I’m 23 and single and I live in Los Angeles and I’ve had one real boyfriend ever but it was in college so it doesn’t even count. Also I paid to see the Sex and the City Movie and am not as ashamed of that fact as I could be. But where Sex and the City was scripted by women and the gay men who love them, this movie seems to have been written by someone who has never actually met one and instead got all of their ideas about what females are like from the advice columns of Cosmopolitan circa 1998.
but you probably will get dumped by post-it or text msg
Break-ups suck and so does dating boys who are not as interested in you as you would like them to be. But by the time you’ve listened to 69 Love Songs on repeat enough times to rememorize all the words you’re usually done feeling sorry for yourself and ready to move on. Sometimes boys are jerks and sometimes girls are crazy but in the end time passes and things wind up okay because what other choice do they have?
But if boys were as consistently awful as Justin Long’s character is in this movie and girls were as mind-numbingly insane as Ginnifer Goodwin’s, mutual hatred would have won out over sexual attraction generations ago and none of us would be around to complain about each other anyway.
He’s Just Not That Into You’s premise seems to be that if Jennifer Aniston doesn’t get proposed to and Goodwin doesn’t find a boyfriend womankind as a whole will succumb to an apocalyptic fate of dog-marrying and getting cackled at by scary old ladies with big hair.
All the characters have rhyming names and the whole story takes place in a world where people under 30 still have landlines and answering machines and Justin Long can reject Kim Kelly without getting his face clawed off. Whatever.
Don’t get me wrong, the script makes some valid points. “When guys act like they don’t give a shit, it’s because they don’t give a shit” is pretty solid, if syllogistic, advice. It is also true that there is a certain type of girl who will run straight into the arms of the last boy who showed any interest in her whether she’s into him or not if the boy she actually likes is mean to her. But these are the kind of lessons you learn from experience, I think, and not romantic comedies.
So, look, what I’m saying is there is no reason for anyone to see this movie ever. If you are going through a breakup and a well-meaning friend tries to make you, email me instead and I will burn you a copy of Ladies and Gentlemen We Are Floating in Space so you and Justin Pierce can get through this bullshit together. In the meantime, here are some Fun Facts:
1. Ginnifer Goodwin’s first big onscreen role was in a Comedy Central original movie called “Porn ‘n Chicken” which sounds like a viable business plan to me.
2. Wilson Cruz, Rickie Vasquez from My So-Called Life is alive and well and in this movie. He was also recently featured in a TV series called “Rick and Steve the Happiest Gay Couple In All The World.”
Quoth his IMDB bio: “’Does the handsome young actor think of himself as an Hispanic role model? "I don't know if I believe in role models," Wilson reflects. "We're all so different; we're all individuals. In the long run, that's what matters.’”
3. In German He’s Just Not That Into You translates to “Er steht einfach nicht auf Dich!” which Babelfish reverse translates to “It does not stand simply on you!”
Sarah LaBrie is the senior contributor to This Recording. She is a writer living in Los Angeles. She writes here, and she tumbls here.
SLB on Slumdog Millionare and Synecdoche
Temptation Inside Your Heart - The Velvet Underground: (mp3)
The Heart You Break May Be Your Own - Patsy Cline: (mp3)
Heartbroken - Aaliyah: (mp3)
Office Of Hearts - Guided By Voices: (mp3)
Smarter Hearts - Superchunk: (mp3)
PREVIOUSLY ON THIS RECORDING
We will come to a point.
We can't overcome that.
This is a bad matchup.
Reader Comments (4)
this is awesome. i had no idea MSCL ricky was in it!!
This movie was terrible and insulting.
Great article! If only everyone's life went the route of meeting Leo DiCaprio through a fish tank and then dying a couple days later.
[...] Smells return of what you ask. [...]