A desperate grab to seem relevant and profound, the film actually begins
with a few from a satellite hovering deep in space, analyzing and collecting
data about all of the people down on Earth below. Emma Thompson's super-serious
narration leads us into the lives of the people below, who have all had their
lives changed by the Internet and technology. Like the similarly-themed
Disconnect from last year, a series of connected stories show us the absolute
worst of what the social networking age has to offer, boiled down into
Afterschool Special simplicity. Adam Sandler, taking a break from vacationing
with his pals in terrible comedies, goes dramatic as Don, whose marriage to
Rachel (Rosemarie DeWitt) has gone stale. We know he's sad because even his
beard is tragic. He masturbates to porn so much the spyware has killed his
computer, forcing him to use the one belonging to his teenaged son, Chris.
Chris has watched so much Internet smut he can no longer get it up with real
girls. Damn libido-killing Internet.
So what else is happening in this "Pale Blue Dot" of ours? Yes,
the film quotes Carl Sagan in a lazy attempt at profundity. Body image issues
crop up with a pair of high school cheerleaders: Hannah (Olivia Crocicchia),
who has a modeling website of questionable legality run by her
celebrity-seeking mother (Judy Greer). Hannah's pencil-thin friend Allison
(Elena Kampouris) has basically quit eating because she frequents chat rooms
with others obsessed with being thin. They tell her to sniff her dinner but eat
celery, instead. The girl needs a visit to the Golden Corral buffet, STAT. But
not nearly as badly as hyper-protective Patricia Beltmeyer (Jennifer Garner)
needs to get herself a life. You think wireless wire-tapping is bad? Patricia
tracks her daughter Brandy's (Kaitlyn Dever) every move, every keystroke, every
phone conversation and text message, leaving the quiet and sensitive girl
afraid to even have friends. When she makes one anyway in MMORPG-obsessed Tim
(Ansel Elgort), it's the kind of freeing experience we know is doomed from the
start. 
This is not a happy movie, or even really a hopeful one. We get the message
within the first 30 seconds: the proliferation of social networking and online
communication has made us less capable of forming new relationships, of
experiencing the real world around us. The rest of the film is a sledge hammer
exercise, with Reitman and co-writer Erin Cressida Wilson adding nothing new to
the discussion. 
This is too talented of a cast for it to be a total buzzkill, though.
Individual scenes and certain relationships work better than others, and
perhaps this film would have been served by pairing down the number of stories
it's trying to tell. Dever and Elgort, standouts from Short Term 12 and The
Fault In Our Stars most recently, have genuine chemistry in the film's most
complicated romance. His character Tim is struggling with abandonment issues
and found a sense of camaraderie in online gaming that he couldn't find playing
football. Brandy is as much a lifeline for him as he is for her, and their
relationship feels more genuine than any of the film's many overdone
dissections of the digital experience. When Don and Rachel's marital malaise
leads to Internet dating sites, hook-ups with paid escorts, and her begging a
creepy Dennis Haysbert to give her a good f**k, things have gotten so ludicrous
it's impossible not to laugh.Seriously, though, it does seem as if Reitman is sinking right before our eyes. The guy who gave us perfectly contemporary films Juno and Up in the Air is now trying too hard to be relevant. Men, Women & Children wants desperately to make an impact on your life, but chances are you wouldn't even "Like" it on Facebook.
Rating: 2.5 out of 5
