| Review:
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While most movies about men and the challenges they
deal with in life, have to do with really big stuff like
beating up alien invaders or saving the planet, all that
women usually get to face is fretting about those men just
not paying some romantic attention to them. And He's Just
Not That Into You is hardly an exception, continuing that
dreary old school Hollywood habit when it comes to female
urges, of putting on the back burner any notions of women
making a difference in the world. Based on the co-gender
authored bestseller of the same name by Greg Behrendt and
Liz Tuccillo, who also penned Sex And The City together,
He's Just Not That Into You boasts a star-studded cast that
paradoxically lifts the mediocre material above its mostly
ho-hum origins, while calling into suspension-of-disbelief
question how or why these glamorous celebs could be such
unrequited rejects, even fictionally speaking. In any case,
why does the world have to be such a small space for women
in movies, that rarely extends beyond their sex lives.***
Not surprisingly, even if it is a comedy, the opener
squarely collars you-know-who when fingering the perpetrator
of universal female woes, zooming in on the mommy blame
game. It was, after all, Mom who consoled you when a bratty
schoolboy punched you or would ridicule you in the playground
for smelling like dog poop, that it's just because he has
a really big crush on you. Enter the female masochist mystique.***
Among the rather crowded cast of whining, generally
miserable young Baltimore women in HJNIY, are Jennifer Aniston
as the frustrated girlfriend of a longtime live-in lover
(Ben Affleck), who's mulling tossing him out because he's
not into marriage; Jennifer Connelly as her co-worker whose
husband (Kevin Connolly) can't seem to resist the urge to
cheat on her with a gorgeous stranger (Scarlett Johansson)
he encountered in the supermarket; Drew Barrymore as a ditzy
and desperate single searching for love online, while bemoaning
the old days when one didn't have to navigate a host of
digital gadgets to find romance, and could simply mate on
the telephone; and finally the clueless, giggly designated
comic relief (Ginnifer Goodwin), a habitual reject looking
all over town for Mister Goodbar.***
"Taylor Carlson"- By - {Blu-ray}
The film gets a very good 1080p Blu-Ray transfer. While
this transfer isn't award-winning in either department,
it's above-average and does the material justice. It's a
bright, solid-looking transfer free of debris, and the pallet
is always colorful, with accurate skin tones. If there's
one issue I have with the image, is that the black levels
tend to crush details in the darker scenes, or any scenes
with prominent shadows. A TrueHD lossless audio track is
included, and while this is obviously not the kind of movie
the benefits enormously from lossless audio, the track is
as good as it could be for a film of this type. All things
considered, the movie actually looks and sounds better on
Blu-Ray than this reviewer would have expected it to.
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| Special
Features: |
Deleted Scenes; Audio Commentary; Optional Commentary
by Director Ken Kwapis; Featurettes: Birthday Party / Walk
Home; Anna Visits Her Mom; Annas Song; Gigis Date with Bill;
Gay Pride Parade; DVD-ROM Features: Digital Copy Online.
{Blu-ray}- By "Taylor Carlson"
A handful of supplements are on the disc, thankfully
all offered in HD. Extended character vignettes, totaling
about 20 minutes, appear here. These will be an interesting
view for anyone who wants to see these segments in their
entirety. Deleted scenes appear as well, and while rightfully
cut from the movie, they will be worth viewing for any fan
of the movie. Closing things out is a pair of behind-the-scenes
featurettes. All in all, it's a competent collection of
features, and fans will definitely want to view these supplements.
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