I’m stunned that this film has a horrendous 29% on rotten tomatoes. [But maybe not so stunned it’s a box office flop.] It’s just a reminder that every so often, the majority of critics get it wrong, and actually pander to broad-audience films a lot more than they should (that October’s other Jennifer Garner movie Alexander and the No Good Day could have a fresh tomato while this one doesn’t is astounding) while being overly harsh on middle-brow message movies. [If this movie had starred a cast of nobodies instead of Adam Sandler and Co. and were made by a first-time director—preferably Swedish—I have no doubt the same critics would be praising its realistic, boldly downbeat vision.]
The film is about five separate families in suburban Texas coping with various addictions to technology, and using the net as a filter for reality: Adam Sandler and Rosemarie DeWitt use the internet for liaisons while their teenage son indulges his every porn whim to the point that he’s no longer even interested in “regular” sex with a flesh-and-blood girl; the fame-starved cheerleader who doesn’t know that yet has a sultry website of her own, managed by her own mom (Judy Greer); then there’s the fellow cheerleader who’s on a blog encouraging eating disorders to motivate her not to eat; plus, Jennifer Garner plays a mom who tries to monitor her daughter’s every keystroke under the guise of protecting her; and her daughter begins a flirtation with The Fault in Our Star’s Ansel Elgort, who himself is lost in an addictive videogame while his recently-jilted dad (Breaking Bad’s Dean Norris) struggles to find a way to talk to him.
I know that looks like a lot, but it’s all interwoven seamlessly enough that it doesn’t feel like a workout to keep up with each individual character.
What Works: It’s ironic that most critics have so harshly judged Jason Reitman (writer/director) for seeming overly afraid of technology, i.e. not really “getting” it. Because this is the first film I’ve seen that truly seems to “get” what people get out of their online worlds, and how that can fill-in the missing components of their real ones to the point where they’re both equally real and neither is fully satisfying them. It understands that people’s virtual realities rub up against and overlap with their real ones, and it’s layering in two existences so that you’re never fully in either one.
Sandler’s character might be “watching his son watch TV” but he’s also searching for porn on his smartphone OR a teenager might be in the room with someone who actually wants to have sex with them/talk to them/care about them, but they’d rather go after the bird in the bush that is texting someone who might want to do those things. By the end, I felt Ansel Elgort’s character’s desperate attempts to keep his role-playing game life going or have a connection with someone via text spoke volumes about what people are really looking for online, and why they’ll never get it. This is the only movie I’ve ever seen that truly gets the anxiety of virtual life, and why it might really matter to someone.
What Doesn’t: Jennifer Garner is clearly channeling a certain “type” for her villainous role here (she’s like a less-interesting version of her own role from Butter), and I wish the movie had done a better job of telling us exactly why her character finds the internet so threatening or personalized that for us to a greater extent. For a movie that treats every other character with such wide-open compassion and interest, Garner’s digital warden comes off as shrill and one-note.
What I Would Have Done Differently: For starters, I wish I had written a review a little earlier, when this film was still likely to be in theaters where people could see it and come to their own conclusions. Maybe people will catch it on Netflix, but watching a film online about the anxieties of living online…well, just don’t let the irony not occur to you.