I really didn't know what to expect other than that it was going to be odd, weird, quirky and hopefully original given the pedigree of Spike Jonze's writing and direction as well as
Joaquin Phoenix's acting. I saw the trailer once as background noise and really didn't pay much attention to it other than "some dude falls in love with Siri". That's what I thought the movie was going to be. But I also thought it was going to be somewhat of a farce in the process of their relationship. What I didn't expect it to be was a serious look at modern day romances, which this absolutely is. Take away the surface of Man falling in love with an
Operating System and look at it from within and you will see it mirroring the reality of all relationships: The good, the bad and the confusing and what you have is
Her. I thought everything about the movie was great, especially the writing.
A little backstory for myself to explain why I really dig this movie. About 10-12 years ago I wrote a very similar story about the perils of romances starting online. When I first got my computer, it opened up a whole new world and one of the first things that I got into was Online Messaging. I met a girl and we texted for awhile before moving onto chatting on the phone and then eventually to meeting in person. I took the basis of this new adventure and used it for a short screenplay that I had written. I wrote a few drafts of it. One was more of a comedy and the other altered version was more serious in tone. They both had two drastically different endings because I really didn't know how I wanted to portray and tell the story.
So, I was very curious how
Spike would end his version, which happened to be one of the two that I had settled on. It wasn't original at all on my part. It was actually informed by other movies I had seen. You know where the Boy is pursuing the head cheerleader or popular girl all the while not realizing the girl he should be with is right next door (See
Some Kind of Wonderful). I really need to find where I put my drafts. They are on a HD for sure, but it's using software that is outdated. I know for a fact that I have a few printed copies as I gave them out to a few people ro read and get feedback on. Anyway, fantastic movie. Great performances by
Joaquin Phoenix and
Scarlett Johansson as the voice of Samantha. I spent the entire movie trying to guess who the voice was and she kept popping up. It sounded like here, but I wasn't 100% positive on that. Highly recommend this as a
Rent.