For a thirty-something, I’m fairly clueless about social technology. I finally joined Facebook last year under duress from friends and family, but go for weeks without checking it. I have an iPhone, which stays in my purse when I go out to dinner and remains in silent mode several hours after seeing a movie, accumulating a little florescent trail of missed texts and phone messages. I do not Tweet and have never been on Instagram. In Los Angeles, this behavior practically brands me a Luddite. So maybe it’s not surprising that “Men, Women, and Children” didn’t light my electronic flame.
I should clarify that Jason Reitman’s exploration of the role of technology in modern life is not a bad movie. The actors are skillful. Jennifer Gardner has played everyone from CIA agents to an ambitious political wife / butter-carving artist, but I like her best when she embraces her inner shrew. That pretty lean face has a wonderful ability to shrivel into a perpetual sniff and it is used to great comic effect when her character, an overprotective mother convinced of technology’s demonic impact on today’s youth, pours over reams of printouts of her daughter’s texts and emails.
The daughter, a quintessential good girl with a bad girl video stream, is played appealingly by Kaitlyn Deve. And it is hard not to like her sensitive boyfriend (Ansel Elgort), who endures taunts for giving up football to play sci-fi fantasy games online and contemplate the meaning of existence while reading Carl Sagan. He is a high-school misfit fantasy—attractive and athletic enough to run with the in-crowd, but thoughtful and independent enough to know better.
In fact, that’s the problem with “Men, Women, and Children.” The characters are not real men, women, or children. They are types. They are vehicles for fables. There’s the sweet, anorexic girl (Elena Kampouris) desperate to get the attention of the cruel, womanizing jock (Will Peltz). There’s the stage mom (Judy Greer) who couldn’t make it in Hollywood and channels her frustrated ambition into a borderline porn website for her aspiring actress daughter (Olivia Crocicchia). There are the husband and wife (Rosemarie DeWitt and Adam Sandler) who, having lost the romantic spark in their marriage, decide—simultaneously—to seek out affairs online. Granted, Sandler brings some sly kick to his half of this pair, particularly in a memorable scene in which he confronts his cheating wife over omelets. (It’s always nice to see the “Big Daddy” star in a role that requires more than squeaky voices and bodily function jokes.)
But even a strong cast and a decent script can’t save this film from its inherent flaw: it’s a thesis, not a story. The narrative arcs all serve one purpose: to demonstrate the ways in which technology can connect, but more often than not, isolate us. A creative writing teacher once told my class, if you want to make an argument, write an essay, not a novel. Maybe Reitman should tried have tried his hand at nonfiction, adding his voice to others such as Beeban Kidron, director of “InRealLife,” who are exploring teens and technology through documentary. The film wouldn’t have starred Garner or Sandler, but it might have come closer to virtual reality.
Emily Turner is an editor at Island Press, where she acquires books on food, health, and sustainability. She has also worked at NYU Press and Academy Chicago Publishers. She earned a BA in English literature from the University of Virginia and is pursuing a MA in Writing from Johns Hopkins University. She lives in Los Angeles, CA.
