The best-selling book “He’s Just Not That Into You” was written by a guy and a gal, Greg Behrendt and Liz Tuccillo.
So, too, was the script for this week’s entry into the romantic-comedy sweepstakes. Abby Kohn and Marc Silverstein did the honors.
So why isn’t this star-laden ensemble comedy about the dating and relationship missteps of a group of Baltimore friends anything more than an OK date movie?
Mac pitchman Justin Long plays Alex, the guy with the insights to cure Gigi of her delusions about men. The two meet when Gigi (Ginnifer Goodwin of HBO’s “Big Love”) does an impromptu “drive by” at a bar that she knows her latest date Conor (Kevin Connolly) frequents. What’s Gigi’s crush really trying to tell her?
Alex is here to decode. If a guy doesn’t call? He’s not interested. If another one says he’s going out of town for few days after a smoochy evening on his couch? Run.
The setup, expanded to other characters, has its charms. There really are things men and women can reveal to each other about the opposite gender’s playbook.
If only Gigi’s delusions weren’t so wince-inducing. Making Goodwin a proto-stalker of disinterested fellas takes her from silly to psycho. We wind up feeling superior and knowing. Her late-in-the-film defense of hope would ring sharper, had she not been so darned hopeless in the early scenes.
Truer, sweeter insights can be found in the seven-year travails of Neil and Beth, played by Ben Affleck and Jennifer Aniston. She begins itching for matrimony and doubting his commitment around the time her younger sis announces her own nuptials.
The couple have enough chemistry for another movie and seem to be working in a different, more adult romantic comedy.
For a subplot that toys with the deepest agonies, there’s the character Ben, wife Janine and Anna. Ben (shimmering looker Bradley Cooper) meets Scarlett Johansson’s Anna (who’s not that into smitten Conor) and feels the tug of straying. You don’t have to be a stickler for onscreen fidelity to find Ben’s conflict teased, but not nailed. What did he and Janine (Jennifer Connelly) have before Anna’s arrival?
The movie breaks from its collection of 20- and 30-somethings to hear from regular folk on their own tribulations. These are some of brightest spots in the Venus and Mars challenge: Two black women on a bench break it down; a blue-collar stiff shares signs of his own, “She’s just not into you,” universe.
Another laugh-out-loud moment comes by way of a very different relationship: homeowner to contractor. Luis Guzmán provides pure deadpan pleasure trying to parse and parry Janine’s barely muted, wholly displaced anxieties.
The better romantic comedies have values beyond guy-gets-girl or vice-versa payoffs.
Best-selling authors Behrendt and Tuccillo knew this. They worked on HBO’s “Sex and the City,” which remains a gold standard for capturing and celebrating the ways in which relationship hankering and personal power entwine. “Into” takes that TV series’ familiar knowledge a step further when gay male friends have loads of theories for Drew Barrymore’s love-challenged character, but are flummoxed on advice for Conor about his crush on Anna.
“He’s Just Not That Into You” has a likable cast going for it. Yet it suffers from its own relationship myopia.
Last week’s contestant in the rom-com race, “New in Town,” is slightly deeper, definitely dearer, if only because it doesn’t obsess with its lead characters.
The romance it values most is love for the American worker. Now that’s a Valentine we can really use.
“He’s Just Not that Into You”
PG-13 for sexual content and brief strong language. 2 hours, 9 minutes. Directed by Ken Kwapis; written by Abby Kohn and Marc Silverstein; from the book by Greg Behrendt and Liz Tuccillo; photography by John Bailey; starring Ben Affleck, Jennifer Aniston, Drew Barrymore, Jennifer Connelly, Kevin Connolly, Bradley Cooper, Ginnifer Goodwin, Scarlett Johansson, Justin Long. Opens today at area theaters.
