We're Just Not That Into 'He's Just Not That Into You'

The Complete IdiotNs Guide to Dating
WeNre just not that into HeNs Just Not That Into You

The smirky, overbearing, subliminally hostile romantic primer HeNs Just Not That Into You—which sold a regrettable 2 million copies when it was published in 2004—seizes on some partial truths about the gender wars and blows them up into evolutionary gospel, as follows: Since cave-dwelling times, men have been programmed to chase. They hate being chased, lie through their teeth as needed and resist marriage to the death. Women, by contrast, make a beeline for unavailable men, willfully misinterpret and overanalyze their signals, and sit around waiting for suitors to call/text/Facebook them when itNs obvious that the unreliable swine have moved on to their next conquests.

The bookNs title is taken from a scene in Sex N the City and hinges on the solipsistic worldview of series consultant Greg Behrendt, with faint murmurs of watery feminist protest from co-writer Liz Tuccillo. Behrendt coyly Nfesses up to being a reformed rascal himself, then steams full-speed ahead to the conclusion that if heNs that way, then so, too, is the rest of mankind. Further, he is the one to set us myopic females straight and empower us to live rich, productive lives regardless of whether we manage to land one of the few golden exceptions to his he-man rule.

BehrendtNs know-it-all bossiness may work for a putative self-help handbook, but it doesnNt set quite the right tone for a chick flick aimed at a generation who, whether they know it or not, have been sufficiently empowered by the womenNs movement to want to direct their own lives. Which is just one of the challenges facing director Ken Kwapis and writers Abby Kohn and Marc Silverstein, who are charged with hacking a romantic comedy out of a plotless collection of cardboard characters and one manNs full-service guide for the ditzy dater. And they donNt come much ditzier than Gigi, nicely played by the adorably hamster-cheeked Ginnifer Goodwin as if practicing to be Sally Field. Though she shares an office with two older, maritally challenged BFFs (the Jennifers Aniston and Connelly)—whose own romantic troubles pipe a limp chorus to her full-blown love addiction—Gigi doesnNt discernibly work. This leaves her free to stage drive-by snoops on an elusive realtor (Kevin Connolly), or sit by her exceedingly pink phone, endlessly dissecting his every mixed message with BehrendtNs alter ego, guy-pal Justin Long, who, along with the countless gay men popping up as water-cooler therapists in current chick flicks, has Gigi all figured out. Except that this being a film beamed at girls and gays, he canNt just be right about everything. He must also show himself, when push comes to shove, inferior in character to his protNgN, as well as in need of enlightenment regarding his own failure to commit.

Kwapis, whose rNsumN competently, if programmatically, spans the sincere (Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants) to the insane (The Office), is a comedy pro with enough finesse to smooth over Cara SilvermanNs banal, slapdash editing. He has also softened BehrendtNs ego and thrown some smarts the way of at least some of the women. If all you ask for is a few gay jokes, a perky score, pretty shots of Baltimore and some clever but callow observations of sexual mores in the city, HeNs Just Not That Into You is an amiable enough night out.

WhatNs depressing about this movie and others like it is the low bar it sets both for modern women and the movies that seek to represent them. That Warner Bros. has issued a companion featurette highlighting the 10 chick-flick clichNs you wonNt find in HeNs Just Not That Into You suggests some well-founded anxiety about precisely this issue, as well as an obliviousness to its own overly familiar characters, which include the obligatory siren hardbody (a hammy Scarlett Johannsson) bent on wrecking a home—and guess who ends up unattached? That women are supporting this rubbish behind and in front of the camera (Drew Barrymore is an executive producer on the movie and has a small role as the kind of nice girl a guy with a wandering eye can finally settle down with) is dismaying. Even more disappointing are the massive female audiences who will flock to this movie as they did to its forerunner, Sex N the City—and Mamma Mia! last year—and leave death threats in the comments section of reviewers who beg to differ.

HeNs Just Not That Into You was directed by Ken Kwapis; written by Abby Kohn and Marc Silverstein, based on the book by Greg Behrendt and Liz Tuccillo. Countywide.