Review of Men, Women & Children (2014) by Sean P — 31 May 2015

Some of the greatest advancements in recent history have come because of technology and its use for communication. Smartphones, tablets, fast internet, social networking sites connecting to nearly everyone on the planet and so forth combine to bring together masses of people for one purpose. Communication is all too important and vital to human beings but it eventually becomes so clogged and misused when it gets paired up with the internet that we misinterpret what it's all for. Men, Women & Children paints a dark and depressing portrait of a small group of people interconnected by chance that get sucked into the complex world of the internet. Within these people and circumstances, it shows the bitter ugliness on how it all affects them with shocking honesty and poignancy.

Don (Adam Sandler) and Helen Truby (Rosemarie DeWitt) are a sexually unsatisfied couple who don't know how to speak about their problems with intimacy. They both eventually resort to dating and escort sites to get sexual fulfillment. Don resorts to masturbating on his sons Chris (Travis Tope) computer because his computer is clogged with malware. Chris is the quarterback for the football team and is too is sexually unsatisfied and is a porn addict who has to resort to online porn to get the pleasure he cannot get anywhere else. His desires go beyond the normal inclinations and often leave him empty.

Hannah Clint (Olivia Crocicchia) is a cheerleader and an aspiring actress who hopes to easily catapult to fame through a reality TV show audition. Her mother Joan (Judy Greer) is a failed actress and takes photos of her to put on her website and to reach out to her many fans. Allison Doss (Elena Kampouris) is also a cheerleader who previously went on a strict diet to impress Brandon Lender (Will Peltz), a boy on the football team who shrugged her off because of her weight. She develops an eating disorder and gains support through an anorexia website.

Tim Mooney (Ansel Elgort) played for the football team as the star running back but quit as he saw no importance in it anymore and instead puts his time and effort into Guild Wars, an MMORPG. Tim uses Carl Sagan's The Pale Blue Dot as a form of mantra on how he currently views the world and becomes alienated by all that is around him. His father Kent (Dean Morris) hopes that he plays football again and is trying to get over his wife leaving them both for California. Brandy Beltmeyer (Kaitlyn Dever) lives under the strict rules of her mother Patricia (Jennifer Garner) who monitors every single thing she does online and deletes things she decides is wrong without Brandy ever knowing. Soon enough Brandy and Tim develop a relationship in a meeting of kindred spirits as no one else seems to understand them.

Well now that I got all of that out of the way, now I can get into it. Director and writer Jason Reitman knows how to bring a cast together and puts a fine one into motion here. Everyone here does their part to stand out and give something that would make them memorable in the end. Sandler doesn't really surprise since its known that he can act within a more dramatic setting as he did in Punch Drunk Love. Here as the schlubby husband, he brings out the subtle nuances of being in a dead end marriage. With the right director, he could really give out some great performances instead of doing crude, dumb comedy all the time. Sandler gave one of the most human performances he has ever done which is a shame since how badly reviewed the film got.

DeWitt was also good and looking for the same things as her on screen husband. She was seen as more excited about the affair than Don where he might show a tinge of regret for enacting on his desires. Neither of them are painted as bad people, but not really good but the way that they presented them as both strained and bored within a marriage at least made you understand their plight even if you don't agree with their actions. Garner was downright despicable as a spying mother that hardly had any redeeming qualities about her and everything she did made me hate her more and more. But given all that, Garner was amazing in that role, nailing down the seriousness and ignorance of the issues that she is parading against.

Steadfast and determined, nothing is too out of line when it comes to what she thinks is protection for her daughter. I felt a little impressed by her determination but overall sad that she has become so obsessed with the influx of new technologies that she thinks is damaging her daughters psyche. Greer was also exceptional as a 21st century stage mom who wants nothing else for her daughter to be successful where she wasn't. Endlessly clueless to what she is participating in; her plans for her daughter are increasingly creepy and twisted. She completely buys that a simple reality TV show will lead to fame and fortune; with her along for the ride of course.

Elgort gives another amazing performance as a troubled teen, after starring in the smash hit The Fault In Our Stars. He has quickly stretched his job as an actor after only being in three films previously. The melancholy, alienation, depression and anger he portrayed was honest and real, much like The Fault In Our Stars. He also has a very strong and expressive face that just oozes emotion. A scene near the end just breaks your heart at how powerful his performance is, which is also apparent in a scene near the end of The Fault In Our Stars.

Dever was incredible and one of the standouts among such a wide and varied cast. I nearly forgot that she was in the amazing and little unseen as far as I know Short Term 12, which also has her in a troubled teen role. For such a young age, she has shown an alarming amount of maturity and tackles difficult characters with ease. Crocicchia was great in her role of a vapid, fame hungry sex pot that relies too much on public opinion to get herself over with the high school populace. Kampouris was good as well, showing the all too real plight of anorexia that many people deal with.

Emma Thompson as the narrator was excellent and really made it stand out. I found her voice to be a perfect companion to the visuals and made it stronger for it. She provided the needed gravitas to explain the ridiculousness of the situations that the characters found themselves in, while keeping it serious and also with a slight condescending tone in peering in on these deplorable people. She makes you dislike as well as feel somewhat bad for them throughout the film. Her narration was crisp and often funny in talking about the bizarreness of the film. It's not often you hear such a delightful, talented, beautiful, regal woman say Bang Bus with utter seriousness and conviction. The whole film was worth it just to hear her say those words in her smooth British accent.

Reitman always has a way to show a distorted view of things that many people take for granted. His more noteworthy and acclaimed works prove that with Up In The Air being his best work but Thank You For Smoking, Juno and Young Adult are not to be unseen as they share the same dark humor and real life trivialities that we all have to deal with. Not his best film but certainly shouldn't be garnering such terrible reviews. While all those films have a more centered narrative and a single main character to lead the story, Men, Women & Children follows a different model. Although all of his films all have a character that is generally unlikable or has some qualities that make them unpleasant to deal with.

Being that Men, Women & Children was based on the novel of the same name by Chad Kultgen and is about the effect of a tool with a wide array of applications with many repercussions and outcomes to come out of it, it would've been hard to construct a more cohesive narrative while still saying all the things you want to say. Reitman has always been topical, using the negatives to technology in Up In The Air and it feels just as timely as that film did when it was released in 2009. It does feel a little jumbled at times, but the sea of all the uses that the internet employs is jumbled in itself. You can't show how it affects people and not include a wide number of them and problems that are caused by them.

The structure didn't bother me or take me out of the issues that were being brought up or the problems of the characters. I got more inclined to see what is to come out of it the longer I watched it. Reitman handles the severity of the issues with aplomb, showing how damaging that the internet can be. It's by far his least funny movie and his most depressing but the sardonic wit and dark humor that is always present in his films is very much included here. With talks of suicide, anorexia, infidelity, sexual frustration and so much more, you can't really make it a laugh a minute affair. But there are moments where you see how the internet and technology affects the characters and you can't help but laugh a little and maybe feel a little disgusted. One of my favorite parts was when Hannah was talking to Allison and another friend about one of her sexual exploits where the two other friends are talking crap about her while texting right in front of her, like any high schooler would do.

With so much packed in, there hardly is enough time to get to all the characters and give them the needed amount of time to go over their story. But he manages to get in as much as possible without making it seem that overbearing. Reitman is hardly ever boring and if you take out Labor Day and you have a track record that is pretty admirable. It was paced very well that moved from one character to another with purpose, even if one person's story is more engaging than the other. It's the sum of all the parts that makes the film work and not necessarily grading each person's segment or story. You could like one story over the other and still enjoy the movie as a whole. It built up the tenser and emotional moment's well where everything finally blows over and while it does feel contrived, it's not something that ever made me feel negatively about the movie.

I didn't mind that the stories overlapped and overlapped into one or that characters were thrown into situations that were too easily set up. In a world where the internet's effects are looked upon a small group of people in a hugely negative way, there's no way that it can't feel anything but contrived. It basically runs the gamut of the perils and destruction that the internet can cause on a specific set of people but that's what I wanted to see. I wanted to see the extremes that these people go through and their possible demise because of it. I could care less that it's set up and contrived, as long as it's portrayed in an extreme and a dramatic manner.

And there are a few extremes here but one doesn't see a movie because there's a sense of normalcy in it. Patricia Beltmeyer was such a case as no parent that I know of would act in such a way but in the same way that she brought up in the film to Kent about the dangers of playing an MMORPG, telling him about parents who neglected their kid who died of dehydration while playing one. Kent said that it's an extreme example but it still does in fact happen, it doesn't mean that immediately dozens or hundreds of people will do the same thing. Patricia is an extreme but it doesn't mean that a form of her doesn't exist. Men, Women & Children is a series of extremes and happenings that wouldn't necessarily happen obviously because it's a movie, but that doesn't mean that there are people who are struggling with the same issues.

This movie isn't meant to be taken as a 21st century version of Reefer Madness, where we all damn the internet for its alluring, beckoning siren call as we fall into its cold grip but a shocking tale of mash up stories that are true in some way, shape or form. The initial buzz that it received was too much to bear as it was expected to be something Oscar worthy and a poignant tale to the technology that we all use and adhere too. I thought it looked like that it would get some awards praise but wasn't getting my hopes up, but I certainly wasn't expecting such terrible reviews. I think it's rather commendable to tackle a subject that is so clouded and depressing, even if we may already know the after effects that the internet and technology has on us.

It leaves off after certain revelations with characters, not going any further which bothered me a little. But you could say that for basically all the characters as they all went through hell and it would be hard to tell where they go from there even if you see the end of their particular story. So not everything needed to be wrapped up and like life, it could go anywhere. You don't need to be a genius to figure out that most of if not all of these people are pretty screwed up and would possibly go down darker roads later in life so that would make up for any lingering conclusions that people may have. Not only are these characters screwed up, but hardly any of them are likable.

Nearly everyone is seen as a pretty terrible person, which they are but to see them bunched together in such close proximity takes its toll on you a little bit. The kids are basically messed up for life with Hannah, Allison and Chris are bound to have a damaged future ahead of them as they have the stories with the least amount of conclusion. Hannah is almost as unlikable as Patricia but someone you can't keep your eyes off of. Tim and Brandy are the only likeable people in the entire movie and they also have the best story with the best chance of not ending up screwed up for life. They have the most natural relationship and you generally care for them in the end. Helen and Don is a pairing that's difficult to see where it's going after the credits roll and you hope that their infidelity won't ruin them both.

I absolutely loved the visuals in this film where it shows all the gadgets that everyone is connected too with all the windows open over their heads. When you put something like that in perspective, it's really quite shocking as you never really see the scope of it all. The inclusion of Carl Sagan's Pale Blue Dot was puzzling at first but as I began to watch Men, Women & Children as well as Pale Blue Dot, I began to understand it more and more. Tim becomes alienated from everything when he sees the photo of Earth photographed billions of miles away by the Voyager I space probe in 1990 and reads about Carl Sagan's place in earth in his book Pale Blue Dot. He questions what the point of life is when earth is nothing but a speck in the vast nothingness of space. Scenes of Voyager I are shown throughout the film with excerpts from a Pale Blue Dot coming at the end of the film.

When I saw the imagery of the probe in the deep of space as well as the excerpts with the tone of the film, I saw it as the importance of communication and not proof that everything is meaningless. The longer the probe goes into space, the better chance that it will make contact with alien life. It reaches into even more importance when it entered interstellar space in 2012. As opposed to life on earth where the further one goes from anywhere, the less likely they will make contact with anything. The probe is sent out because there is nothing left to explore here and the vast technology we have is used to communicate with beings that may or may not exist. In the film on earth, the characters take the technology for granted and use it for silly, meaningless and trivial gain that doesn't really help anyone and in turn get further away from those they care about and more importantly themselves.

The pale blue dot should inspire as it shows the far reaches that man and technology can come to when they are put together as one while realizing that every important, impactful event and everything in between that has ever happened in the existence of space and time has happened on this one single planet. It really makes you think of the scope of where we are in the universe while also placing your importance and luck to be born in an environment that supports life. It's hard to.