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He's Just Not That Into You

Jennifer Aniston, Drew Barrymore, Jennifer Connelly, Scarlett Johansson

‘What is the worst thing that can happen? She says, ‘no?’” If anyone says something like that to you, they are lying through their teeth. Over a year back, I was flagged down on the Internet by a fan of this column. She was smart, had personality plus, and I began to enjoy her friendship. In fact, I began to look forward to my instant messenger popping up to let me know that she wanted to talk to me. Some of our conversations went for five or six hours and I became one of the few individuals lucky enough to get to know the inner-her. I could have cared less if she weighed 400 pounds. She was an amazing person, maybe one of the top two or three people I have ever met. One thing led to another and she wanted us to meet. I was extremely reluctant, mainly because I knew if things went badly, I was going to loose this part of my life that I had come to enjoy so much. The blind date was set up. I was going to take her to a preview of a Harry Potter flick. Movies are wonderful for blind dates. Why? Because if she is totally repulsed by how you look, you do not have to see her face in the dark. The worst that can happen is that look; that look between she just stepped in something a dog has left behind and this is going to be the longest night of her life. Now everyone has their dog date stories but no one ever tells when they were the one wagging the tail throughout the date. The biggest “screw you” move you an individual can do on a blind date is to text one’s friends on the cell phone instead of paying attention to the date and as she climbed into my vehicle she pulled out Alexander Graham Bell’s invention faster than a gunslinger at high noon and while I would not swear to it in a court of law I think the movement of reaching into her purse broke the sound barrier. On the bright side, there was 30 seconds down and five hours, fifty-nine minutes and thirty seconds left to go. As we drove to Des Moines, a couple of times she got that look that my dog got when I was driving her to the vet’s to be put to sleep.

Instead of being outraged, I felt for her. This was my friend, someone I had come to only want happiness for. I knew that this was going to be a miserable time for her and once the date ended she would never be my friend again. No more all night talks. The flagging down would be less frequent and our conversations would become more shallow and superficial than a Paris Hilton fan club, but both of you feel the need to go through the motions like a newbie learning to waltz the box step so you do not feel like a total jackass. Problem is, I am a total jackass, extremely shy, especially when hurt, and would rather act crazy to drive the person away than spend the next few years watching the friendship door close until you are just wishing each other happy birthdays and commenting on goofy photos on each other’s Facebook pages. I would love to go into details about the rest of the evening but I know there are small children that could possibly pick this column up and I do not want to be responsible for the years of therapy it would take to get such horrifying images out of their heads. Feeling like a drowning man, I began to think it was all in my noggin until she left the bar to go to the bathroom. The blonde bartender walked up to me, patted my hand, and said, “Honey, I feel for you. She is just not into you.”

Brilliant advice… until I realized she was getting it from Sex and the City, the episode entitled “Pick-A-Little, Talk-A-Little.” I do not know what is worse. The fact that someone is giving me advice from a shallow, vapid television show that basically is an instructional video for women in how to release their inner-whore, or that I knew from what source she was drawing from. Answer: B because it means I might be the only heterosexual man to have ever watched the adventures of Goldilocks and the three sluts. I am going to admit some things that I am super embarrassed by. My best friend, who is married, yes, to a woman, and I have been to Lilith Fair. We sat front row, center for Barry Manilow and we both knew all the words to “Mandy” and “Copa Cabana.” It was awesome. We both can quote Sylvia Plath off the tops of our heads. We have seen probably every Merchant-Ivory film ever made, and Sex in the City is too chick-ish for him.

In turn, I was expecting more of the same from this film. After all, it was written by Greg Behrendt and Liz Tuccillo, who had penned the above mentioned episode for the show. They tried these words of advice uttered by Carrie’s boyfriend, Berger, into a self-help book for women of the same title. Naturally, Hollywood writers would want to cash in with a big screen version of it. If Mean Girls can be based on an anthropological study of high school girls, the website Darwin Awards and paintings by Thomas Kinkade can inspire movies, and Malcolm Gladwell’s book can be optioned, then a non-fiction pop psychology book about relationships can certainly be turned into a film. There is a who’s who of actresses wanting to be a part of this project including Drew Barrymore, Jennifer Connelly, Jennifer Aniston, Scarlett Johansson, and Ginnifer Goodwin. Many of whom are probably just as famous for their off-screen relationships that have gone south, as for their acting. Even Ben Affleck, remember when he was supposed to be the next big leading man, is dusted off to add what black hole of star power he has to this work. With that kind of pedigree and star power, one is expecting a movie along the lines of last summer’s Sex and the City movie. Is that what we got?

No, it is closer to that blind date I went on. Much like a Robert Altman film, multiple interconnected story arcs all involving male/female relationships are stitched together to form the narrative of this film. The problem with doing a Robert Altman type narrative is that it has already been done much better numerous times by Altman himself and critics are going to naturally compare whatever you do to his work. Sometimes it is done well in movies like Crash and Love Actually, but most of the time ends up with one or more of the storylines being as lame, forced and out of place as Aquaman in a “Super Friends” cartoon episode. It is no different here. Most of the storylines are pure Hollywood by the numbers formula fare. While the main message of the extremely simplistic self-help book is there, the movie lacks the snappy spirit of the HBO drama. The film is about as good as one of the lesser episodes, which is a real shame because masculine Hollywood gears so few films towards women every year. The teenage boy cinematic cup runneth over but female centric narratives are as common as Mensa meetings at Paris Hilton’s house.

I have learned long ago that simple pop culture slogans and advice, when it comes to relationships, are not worth the effort it takes to write them. Every relationship one is in, there is a whole host of reasons for their being and most are deeper and more complex, unsettling, and weird than a Siamese twins orgy. Deal with your issues, because like the perfect vacation, you will never have the perfect relationship, because you will always be bringing yourself along. I tell you this because you do not want some really cool person to come along and it ends up being a bad date. Did I ever tell you the story of the time when I was 19 and my best friend set me up with a 6’4, 35-year-old virgin who was late for the date because she had just beat up, in a fit of road rage, a middle-aged dude that accidently cut her off in traffic.

Verdict: There is a reason it was released this time of year.