‘Men, Women & Children’ Review: Another Timely Movie

'Men, Women & Children' Review: Another Timely Movie

Today, almost everyone knows how to use and have access to internet. We use it to connect and communicate with each other. Another film will be released in theatres near you that will focus on how people use their privilege in internet access; it's the Jason Reitman's "Men, Women & Children."

Chances are you already know that people have their share of personal problems, because it's true and it's obvious. So, what's the film is all about? It simply shows how does technology affect modern day relationships? That is subject matter ripe for a biting satire, but instead Reitman - who shot to fame with Juno and won acclaim with Up In The Air - turns it into a dreary tale of depression and sex in suburbia with little resolution and a lot of on-screen text message and web-browsing graphics in the whole film.

The film really has a nice visualisation of modern communication that works on screen, giving the viewer a really attached string to the film. Men, Women & Children tries far too hard to be relatable. It is relatable in its representation of the modern world and the current state of technology, but it's too bogged down in being lecturing to really stick with you or bring about any great realisation.

This desire to be relatable extends to the characters which is a large ensemble of high school students and their parents, each defined by a web-related trait or fault. Being an ensemble, the story is spread thin and the resolutions to these stories spread even thinner. When the characters are either terrible people or we don't spend enough time with them to really understand or root for them, there's really little to care about or be invested in.

Really, the characters in the film are little more than caricatures - there's the cheerleader who dreams of fame and posts pictures of herself modelling online, the formerly obese girl with an eating disorder who seeks help in staying thin from strangers online, a married couple with a dormant love life, a woman overly-fearful of the web and a father and son who can't connect following the mother's departure.

The majority of the young cast do well, but are a bit monotonous. The same goes for Adam Sandler who spends most of the film speaking in depressing tones and always looking up for online porn. Emma Thompson supplies a dry narration over a clumsy framing device for the story, her tone not helping the feeling of being lectured by writers Reitman and Erin Cressida Wilson, who work from the book by Chad Kultgen. Then there's Jennifer Garner, whose overbearing, fearful, tabloid-soaked mind wreaks havoc over other people's lives with little concern.

Also read: Know more about Men, Women & Children (2014)

Everyone in the film is a cliché, resembling one-dimensional characters in a government-produced instructional video warning parents of "THE PERILS OF MODERN TECHNOLOGY." That kind of warning is the film's premise, but it's not quite the message.

The message is that everyone has their own problems, that it is your parents who are more likely to mess you up than the web and that young people today make the same mistakes off and online that everyone has been making since the dawn of time.

Then here's the ending, which has a glimmer of hopefulness, but not so much as to leave the film on a hopeful note. By and large the characters end up more depressed than when they started. Bummer.

To get a flavour for this film's general pointlessness, try to picture some of the film's climatic scenes, in which Adam Sandler makes omelettes, Jennifer Garner unplugs a USB device and Hank from Breaking Bad attempts to play a video game on his son's PC and more.

Also read: "Men, Women and Children" - Movie that makes Internet right

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