So there’s this guy, right? We met through friends and totally hit it off. He took my number, I batted my eyelashes all cute-like and sashayed off, thinking that I’d clinched the deal. But no. How deluded I was. No calls, no messages, no e-mails, no texts. Nothing.
In the spirit of looming mid, here’s a quick multiple-choice question: Monsieur DuJour has a) lost my number, b) lost his phone, c) lost Facebook or d) He’s just not that into me.
If we’re to believe the spirit behind He’s Just Not That Into You the answer is d)—always, with, perhaps one exception in a gazillion cases.
Five years ago, before its big date with the big screen, HJNTIY was just a lonely self-help book written by Greg Behrendt and Liz Tuccillo, two writers for Sex and the City. The book catapulted to the top of the New York Times Best-Seller List with its “no excuses” mantra, encouraging women to stop obsessing over sub-standard men and trust that if he’s into you, he’ll call.
The film, on the other hand, brings the book’s doctrine to life as it charts the dating misadventures of Gigi (Ginnifer Goodwin). The poor girl routinely launches herself at uninterested men like a vampiric estrogen rocket taking off from Cape Canaveral only to promptly return home and engage in a riveting staring competition with her silent phone. Lest the suspence get to you, the phone wins—it always does.
Weaving through Gigi’s embarrassing and abysmal love life are the threads of other individuals getting themselves into various romantic scrapes while illustrating the book’s main dogmas: He’s just not that into you if he’s not calling you, not having sex with you, having sex with someone else, doesn’t want to marry you, breaking up with you or he’s married and/or otherwise quite unavailable.
Sheesh. That’s a lot of guys, including Monsieur DuJour, who are just not that into me. But wait a tick. Isn’t there something a little fishy about this worldview? It wrests all kinds of power from women by saying that there’s nothing we can do but wait until Monsieur in-it-for-the-long-haul calls? It reduces women to little more than restaurant lobsters, waiting for the right diner to lift them out of the tank and into the pot of boiling water. Until then, girls, I guess we should just paint our claws and polish our exoskeletons.
Not to mention the fact that the mantra touted by both the book and the movie cages men up in the stifling man-box of heteronormativity. Is it fair to perpetuate the stereotype of men as blood-sporting orangutans on the prowl? Hardly. Not to mention that the gay men depicted in the film—and there are quite a few—each play into the hackneyed media-perpetuated stereotype that all gay men are wildly flamboyant and somehow in possession of a deeper wisdom about hetero relationships than that available to heterosexuals. I adore my gay friends, but I wouldn’t call any of them especially extra-wise about issues of the heart just by virtue of their gay-ness. Regardless, the cast is about as star-studded as it gets; Jennifer Aniston, Ben Affleck, Scarlett Johansson, Drew Barrymore, Jennifer Connelly, Justin Long and Kevin Connolly each figure more or less substantially, but to what effect, I’m not altogether sure. It reeks of a cash grab. As per usual, Johansson seduces, Barrymore lisps, Long is likable, Aniston is… Aniston—all pout and mediocrity. You get the picture.
But to its credit, HJNTIY doesn’t resolve each of its plots towing an “and then they lived happily ever after” line. Some people stay single—oh, sorry, get to engage in some “self-exploration”—some people break up, some people bask in the joys of a happy union. Yet at the very end, after tying up these stories with such variety, GiGi’s voice-over proclaims we shouldn’t worry because there’s someone out there for everyone. But if we’re to believe in the possibility of a variety of endings to stories, shouldn’t we also be allowed to entertain the idea that some people are just not going to end up with a life-long—or semi-life-long—mate? At best, this is an incongruous cop-out that undermines the supposed get-over-it mantra the film spouts.
This isn’t to say you shouldn’t see He’s Just Not That Into You.
It’s a fine movie but won’t change your life by any stretch. Yet, although I should know by this point that Monsieur DuJour just isn’t that into me, part of me still thinks that maybe he’s not calling me because he spilled chemicals on his phone in his efforts to cure cancer, or maybe his phone fell to the bottom of Lake Ontario while he was rescuing drowning orphans, or maybe…
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