To be honest, I did not have much confidence in this movie being all that good. The trailers I’ve seen are interesting and the idea itself is definitely novelty, but there have been many movies with novel ideas that fell short of expectations. Well, to sum up this review in one sentence, this is not one of those movies. Not only is Her thought provoking, romantic, weird, odd, heartwarming, it is also “f-ing!” hilarious. Those who has seen the movie understands this reference, towards the beginning, there is a scene where the protagonist is playing a game and comes across a really cute and chubby white blob of that starts cursing nonstop at the protagonist. Turns out it’s a test, and the protagonist passes the test by repeatedly yelling “F- you!” in order to pass the level.
There are also very awkward sexual scenes for the sexually lonely protagonist including choking cats and having sex with his computer program, Samantha. The movie takes place sometime in the future where technology is clearly more advanced than it is right now but not by much. The lonely protagonist stumbles across a computer program, very much like Apple’s Siri expect Samantha is a lot more human like. Samantha is nothing more than a voice (Scarlett Johansson) which talks to the narrator, and does not have a physical form of any sorts. Not sure if it’s programming or not, there are many incidents in the movie where Samantha confesses that she is actually growing and she feels emotions and falls in love with over 600 people. The audience is stuck between whether or not to support the love between the protagonist and Samantha because even though Samantha is just a computer program, the protagonist clearly is able to connect with Samantha on a level of which he is not able to connect with any real life girls, including his now ex-wife, Katherine, played by Rooney Mara.
I was surprise when I bought the tickets and realized the movie was Rated R but there is good reason for that. There’s a scene at the very beginning with a naked pregnant lady who the protagonist fantasizes he was having sex with. I believe these scenes are to make the movie more comical and yes, these scenes are much unexpected and pops out at random so audience beware! Or not, because the unexpectedness is part of what makes these scenes so funny. Also the way the movie is arranged is supposed to show the daily lives of the protagonist, day by day and the movie might actually seem a lot longer than it is. The movie itself is just a little over two hours, 126 minutes to be exact.
The bottom line is, I would definitely recommend this movie. It’s really sweet and sad but funny and loving. Topics that it touches upon include advanced technology and its effects, loneliness, the need to love and acceptance, isolation, love going wrong, friendship, and especially the realms of love and its limits and dept.