Monday, June 22, 2009

“He’s Just Not That Into You” (2009)


Fact....or fiction?

Okay, so, this movie captures the dating life of many females in society. The film revolves around a couple of different relationships, each with their own angle and plot. The main focus, though, involves a woman named Gigi (Ginnifer Goodwin) who basically plays the hopeless romantic who just wants to find love. However, along the way she encounters various men, each of whom she brutally realizes (with the help of a rather blunt Alex, played by Justin Long) are truly not into her. She falls for every little thing her at-the-time love-interest says, does, or feels (or, rather, how she thinks they feel). Any potential guy could be “the one” that she doesn’t want to miss out on. Alex became her crutch to help her realize that not every guy (or in her case, no guy) liked her, that they weren’t going to call, and that they would not want to see her again. Heart wrenching, I KNOW!

While guys are able to be brutally honest with their thoughts, girls, when asked for advice, try to make the person feel better instead of facing the imminent facts. The girl friends tend to give reasons as to why there has been no attempt at communication since that day. According to the movie, these excuses include, but are not limited to, claims that, “he’s just scared of your emotional maturity,” or “you’re just too pretty, and too awesome,” or “he just got out of a serious relationship,” or “trust me, it’s because he’s never had a serious relationship.” And the list goes on, and on…and freaking on. Is it sad that I just listed all those without watching the movie? Maybe now you will begin to understand what I do with my spare time. Anyways, let’s get back on track. Maybe it’s because it’s easier to think of and reach for excuses rather than facing the truth that he just really doesn’t like you enough to want to get to know you better. I mean, when you think about it….say you meet someone and after talking for a while they just walk away. You’d call him a jerk (or other choice words) for not asking for your number, or, in this day and age, a MSN address or full name so that he can find you on Facebook. So, by taking your number, maybe he feels as though he’s doing you a favour and letting you down “easy.” Or, even better, maybe he thinks that you would forget about it by the time you drunkenly (or not so drunkenly) got home that night – fat chance, but hey…I’m not venturing into that twisted labyrinth that people call a mind. Let’s be brutally honest here: I think that I’d rather have that scenario than be told flat out that he doesn’t WANT my number. Again, it’s just easier to justify to yourself, and your friends, and whoever else witnessed the event that he didn’t get around to calling than having to say he didn’t WANT to call. True story.

Well, now that you have experienced the cynical part of the blog that we warned you about, maybe there is a rainbow after the storm afterall. Maybe you’re lucky enough to actually manage to get a call (or, more likely, a text message). Chances are that you have been glued to your phone and haven’t left a room (let alone have it out of arms reach) without it. Text etiquette: remember it, and if you don’t know it, learn it…quick. Not everyone is a “texter.” By “texter” I mean someone who is willing to have MSN-worthy conversations through a credit card sized device with buttons the size of Tic-Tacs, known as a cell phone. If you have a sent/received text ratio greater than 2:1, or, more likely 5:1…knock it off…get it down to 1:1 even though it’s HARD and seems impossible…I'll admit, I know that I’m not one to talk. I am guilty of being a text addict. If there was a textaholics anonymous…I’d be the weakest member, guaranteed.
I feel that it is appropriate to enter a quote from the movie right about now, with having cell numbers, BlackBerry pins, voicemail, MSN, Facebook…etc. etc….as ways of communication:
“I had this guy leave me a voice mail at work, so I called him at home, and then he emailed me to my BlackBerry, and so I texted to his cell, and then he emailed me to my home account, and the whole thing just got out of control, and I miss the days when you had one phone number and one answering machine, and that one answering machine had one cassette tape, and that one cassette tape either had a message from the guy or it didn’t, and now you just have to go around checking all these different portals just to get rejected by seven different technologies. It’s exhausting.”

Couldn’t be further from the truth.

So, there’s my insight of what I have collected from this movie when combined with my rather large collection of other timeless romantic comedies, and the very little I have from personal experience. Movies never lead you astray though, I mean come on, I’ve always wanted to be a night security guard at a museum to see all of the exhibits come to life at night [Night at the Museum, for all you who don’t know]. Anything past this, I wish you the best of luck. Whatever comes of it feel free to let me know…this is getting out of my area of expertise (not like I had any to begin with, though…).

Wow…this post is making life so much clearer by the sentence. I should have started this thought process ten years ago. This is all I’m going to write, however, while continuing to watch this fabulous, life-changing movie I will document notes that I deem either worthy or absurd.

- Quote: “If a guy is a jerk to you, he likes you.”
Not only did Disney ruin our lives, but teachers and any other adult that ever told you that phrase as a child helped to dig your grave, too.

- Gigi ends a date with Colin, and calls her friend saying that she thinks that Colin is leaving her a message on her home phone right that instant.
Clearly, he wasn’t, but was calling up another girl. Who actually calls right after a date, anyways?

- The “spark.”
According to the movie it doesn’t exist, but is an excuse to not see someone again

- The movie does show a guy who acts similarly to Gigi, but with one female instead of every random guy.
Wow, who knew…?

- If he’s not calling you, he doesn’t want to call you. The best quote of the movie regarding the tragedy of caller ID is, “If a guy doesn’t call me I would like to preserve the right to call him in 15 minute intervals until he picks up. But, if he looks down and sees my number he would think that I’m a psycho or something, which I’m not...obviously.”

That pretty much sums it up. Of course, Gigi and Alex end up together. It IS a romantic comedy here, people!

***Note: I am well aware that this is a drastically different topic than my last posts. My hockey life is over, thus something else needs to fill the void until something exciting happens.

Ciao!
-Heidi

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