Films like He’s Just Not That Into You bother me because at it’s heart is the presumption that human behaviour is so simplistic that it can be quantified easily by self-help books. And that extends especially to books named after one-off lines of dialogue in random episodes of Sex & The City. HJNTIY is a movie that thinks it’s much smarter than it really is, like The Da Vinci Code, believing that it’s broken into some kind of esoteric knowledge that unlocks some powerful truths and breaks it down into easy to digest bits. But in reality, it’s revisiting a well that’s run dry ages ago. For a more thorough dissection, I’ve broken my review down by couple.

Beth (Jennifer Aniston) & Neil (Ben Affleck)

In a movie full of ridiculous contrivances, their storyline managed to have more nonsense per minute than any other character drama in this picture. The crux of their relationship is that Beth wants Neil to marry her and Neil doesn’t believe in marriage as an institution. Now you’d think this deal-breaking question would have come up long before their seventh anniversary together, but because this is an offensively unintelligent romantic comedy, it hadn’t. It just seems kind of bizarre that in this modern age, an intelligent woman would say, here’s this great guy that loves me and is committed to me, but he must sanctify the commitment in a way I want and that betrays his very principles. And if he doesn’t, then he must go. Really? Did anyone from the authors of the book to the makers of the movie question this fallacy? The only thing possibly worse than how Beth and Neil’s drama is set up, is how it’s resolved.

Janine (Jennifer Connelly) & Ben (Bradley Cooper)

If there’s ever an example of marriage as ‘con,’ it’s the relationship between Janine and Ben. This is where HJNTIY’s rules seem to be as facetious as they really are. It’s explained that Janine issued an ultimatum to Ben to marry her or else, so naturally their marriage seems to have stagnated. It’s stuck in neutral, if you will; nether crumbling or solidifying, it just is. The film’s stupid rules begin to teeter under its own hypocrisy: “If he won’t marry then…” On the one hand, you have Neil who’s about as committed as a husband can be, but because he won’t marry Beth, he has to go? Meanwhile, the husband who’s bored and listless is worth keeping around and trying to work it out with. Huh.

Ben & Anna (Scarlett Johansson)

Yep, Ben gets so bored in his marriage that he strays, and because she’s a yoga instructor/singer than looks like Scarlett Johansson, it’s practically okay. Well, not really. But again there seems to be a bizarre morality at work in the film where marriage is the paragon standard of a successful relationship, although it is okay to betray it in the event of “finding the person you’re meant to be with.” Now I don’t judge what two consenting adults do in the privacy of their own private lives, but isn’t there an inherent contradiction here? You can’t hold up the institution, while calling it a barrier to living your life. Hell, Neil, the film’s anti-marriage advocate, doesn’t even go there as an argument against being married.

Anna & Conor (Kevin Connelly)

Oh, and Anna has a guy on the side too, although because he’s a nice guy, and there’s no facetious spark, she keeps him dangling while she pursues Ben. If Connelly weren’t so bland it might be possible to feel sorry for him, or if he wasn’t introduced in the very first scene out on a date with someone else then he might be more sympathetic as he haplessly pursues Anna. If anything, Conor takes the brunt as the punching bag that seems to prove everything that’s wrong with dating and the way we date and as a result. He’s easily the second blandest character in the film and there was a lot of competition for that title.

Gigi (Ginnifer Goodwin) & Alex (Justin Long)

This was actually the most compelling, if not the only compelling, relationship in the film. I almost wished Alex and Gigi could have been the sole focus of the movie, which probably would have had the added benefit of chopping the film down to a more comfortable 90 minutes. Alex is the one that gets to disseminate the “He’s Just Not Into You” rules, while Gigi is the pastiche for all the female clichés in romantic comedies, right down to proclivities for stalking and over-reaction to any man’s interest. But Long and Goodwin have good chemistry and they’re the only couple that seems to learn anything and grow past the silly conceit of the film.

Mary (Drew Barrymore)

Poor Drew Barrymore gets the shaft in this film, which is interesting because she’s one of the producers, so you think that she would have been given something juicy to do. But actually, her character gets hosed. She’s the frumpy BFF to Johansson’s character and spends most of the movie lamenting the fracturing nature of technology and how it s a barrier to communication rather than an asset. In the end, Mary finds herself with the one character who also turns out to be the odd person out, and after they meet, she confidently deletes her My Space page. Huh? One would think that as an ad manager for a major alternative paper, she would use her My Space for networking. You know, for business. But I digress.

So here in the end, we realize that HJNTIY, is an empty pocket holding no more wisdom than the average self-help book turned movie. There is no insight here, and frankly, I’m offended by the infuriation. Get a bunch of pretty and talented actors in a room and hand them a dull script and it still comes out dull, not to mention plodding, predictable, shallow and unfunny. Sorry gang, I guess I’m just not that into you.