Random Musings

Ok, so I finally got down to watching this movie.

As mentioned a few posts ago, I hardly ever go to the movies. Hence, I missed this movie when it was still in cinemas.

So last week I was at a DVD shop and bought it for something like 29 bucks and popped it into my player on Friday night to have a go at it.

(I just realised that from an economical standpoint, it doesn’t make sense at all. I’m much better off paying, what, 8 or 9 bucks to watch it at a cinema than buying the whole DVD, which I’m probably going to watch a few times at most. But at least on DVD I get to pause and rewind everytime I come across a funny part. Yes, I do that quite often!)

So anyway, I think this movie is quite unique in the sense that it explores an angle that very few other romantic comedies ever explore – that is the angle of how to tell that a guy is NOT into you.

To my limited knowledge, very few other rom-coms ever explore this premise.

Anyway, the movie features a star-studded cast, including Jennifer Aniston, Ben Affleck, Jennifer Connelly, Scarlett Johansson, Drew Barrymore, and so on.

It also reminds me a lot of “Love Actually” (which I was glad to have caught on a plane recently), whereby the movie is made up of seemingly disparate relationships…but eventually you’ll find that they are all intertwined somehow.

Gigi plays the girl who can never find the right man, and is always giving herself false hopes that a man is into her and will call her…but always ends up disappointed in the end. (But it has to be pointed out that she is rewarded with one of the happiest endings in the end.)

Beth (Aniston) and Neil (Affleck) have been in a relationship for like 7 years but Neil is unwilling to commit to marriage, so Beth initiates a breakup. But after awhile, Beth realises that she can’t live without Neil and decides to get back together again, regardless of whether there will be a marriage or not. Eventually Neil proposes to Beth. (I thought this story was the most touching of all.)

Conor is a real funny guy who has the hots for Anna (Johansson), but she’s just stringing him along all this while. Eventually he gets together with Mary (Barrymore) and they have a pretty good ending. (Conor is a really funny guy! A very likeable character.)

There are other mini-plots in the movie. What I’ve mentioned are just some of them.

…

Truisms

The beauty of “He’s Just Not Into You” is that it portrays so much truth in it.

It portrays the whole “going crazy while waiting for someone to call, checking your phone every few seconds, coming up with a million excuses to explain why he/she didn’t call, convincing yourself that the signs are there” dynamic really well.

And it’s something which I’m sure almost all of us can relate to very well – the bittersweet feelings of being totally into someone.

One of my favourite parts was when Alex (who had always been the cool, confident, nonchalant type) started to find himself suddenly interested in Gigi and became so nervous all of sudden while waiting for her to call him back.

And his colleague Kelli Ann realised the classic signs he was exhibiting, and said to him: “You can’t hide it, man. I know strung out, and you are strung out…This is amazing. You can’t focus. Right? Jumping every time your phone rings. Checking your e-mail a hundred times a day. Wishing you could write songs…No. Feeling the need to bring up her name in random conversations. It’s always the same and it has happened to you, my friend.”

How true, how true. Definitely one of my favourite quotes in the movie.

I think overall, the movie does give a realistic portrayal of the realities of the behavioural tendencies of men when it comes to dating.

Of course there are always exceptions to everything (and the movie even touches on the whole “exceptions” concept too!), but by and large, I believe that when it comes to men, what the movie says is more or less true.

I think the most telling scene was earlier on when Gigi was so convinced that Alex was into her (when at that point, he wasn’t really into her yet) that she came on strong towards him…then Alex told her off by asking her rhetorically something like “Have I asked you out?!”

The answer was obviously “no” at that point, to which Alex said something like “If a guy is interested in you, he will ask you out!”

And I would have to agree with that statement.

If a guy is really interested in a girl, he would definitely ask her out.

The only other possibility whereby a guy who is interested in a girl does NOT ask her out is when he is just too afraid to risk rejection and passes on the opportunity.

This is just my opinion lah. I can only speak for myself.

Lastly, I noticed that Rotten Tomatoes only gave this movie a 43% rating, but personally I really enjoyed the movie quite a lot so that’s all that matters, ha!