Men, Women & Children

 

Directed by: Jason Reitman

Memorable quotes:

Narrator: Don gave a brief thought to masturbating only using his imagination but the sheer quality and variety of the internet had left his brain an inferior substitute.

Hannah Clint: You are seriously skinny this year.
Allison Doss: Thanks. I went on this super diet all summer.

Hannah: I tried not eating one summer but my bobbies dropped one size so I quit. I can't be having that.

Hannah: It's a new era for women, okay? Just because I am comfortable with my body and enjoy hooking up doesn't make me a slut.

Allison: Oh my God, was it gross?
Hannah: No. It wasn't that bad. It was kinda salty I guess.
Allison: You let him like, you know, finish in your mouth?
Brunette friend: Allison!
Hannah: Uh, yeah. How else would I know it was salty?
Brunette friend: Why would you even have to take a photo?
Hannah: I need to know what my audience is seeing. Anyway, I'm just saying, it's like a natural progression. And if you don't sleep with somebody soon you're gonna be completely retarded in bed when you're a junior and it counts.

Brandy Beltmeyer: Yeah, I'd really hate to get any more compliments, mom, it could really do a lot of damage.

Helen Truby: What kind of mother abandons her family... for California?

Narrator: Football served as a common language for which they had no substitute.

Narrator: Hannah knew that her future would include a larger house with a swimming pool in Los Angeles, an expensive car with tinted windows to prevent paparazzi from taking photographs as she went shopping. And an attractive boyfriend who would be famous but perhaps not quite as famous as her. She mentioned all if this in her essay.

Brandy: Why...why did you quit?
Tim Mooney: I just realized it didn't matter.
Brandy: Just like that?
Tim: Do you know "Pale Blue Dot" by Carl Sagan?
Brandy: Er, I've heard of Carl Sagan.
Tim: It's about how we're just made up of billions of molecules, like the same molecules that have been around since the big bang and they'll be around til eventually the universe crunches into nothing. I find that comforting.
Brandy: Okay.
Tim: The actions of like Hitler, Gandhi, Jesus Christ mean absolutely nothing and it's no big deal if I don't play football.

Narrator: There were many other things that Tim wished to share with Brandy, most notably that his mother had left him and his father for California at the beginning of summer and had kept in touch mainly through facebook. But he resisted. While he knew cosmically that nothing mattered, he also realized that something about talking to Brandy did matter, at least to him and this was enough.

Narrator: Allison Doss had developed a crush on Brandon Lender in 7th grade. It had been her greatest hope that he would be her first kiss. Brandon remained the object of Allison affection despite having once said within earshot "I'd fuck her if I could find the hole".

Patricia Beltmeyer: A couple in China played Guild Wars so much they neglected their baby and it died of dehydration. 
Kent Mooney: I'm sure that's an extreme example, no?
Patricia: I can show you how to uninstall the game.
Kent: No, I was really just looking to see if you knew what the game was like.
Patricia: I do know what's it like Kent. It's a virtual world. Your son had created an avatar of himself. An avatar is an icon or a representation.
Kent: I know what it is.
Patricia: Then you know that an avatar is often demoniac or evil looking? When he is plugged in, your son thinks that the world, the world of Guild War, is the real world. Our world doesn't matter anymore. His friends don't matter. School don't matter. You don't matter.

Donna Clint: All I know is you don't matter.
Kent: I don't matter?
Donna: You don't matter. Your truck doesn't matter. Your son doesn't matter. And that is why I have installed a camera in my daughter's brain and a seven digit pin code on her vagina. If you'd like, I can show you how to do it.

Tim: Is she watching us right now?
Brandy: No, she just tracks me online.
Tim: Seems like a psycho.

Male friend: He is a bog old bitch if you ask me.
Allison: Your brother or Brandon?
Male friend: They're both bitches.

Allison: Wait, erm...should we... like...
Brandon: Oh yeah so, the first time, it's gonna hurt a little bit but it's just something you're gonna have to do to get it over with, you know what I'm saying?

Brandon: Okay, look, we can stop if you want. But eventually you're gonna have to do it. I'm not like a rapist.

Patricia: But take your phone honey, so I can track you.

Donna: I slept with guys for less.

Escort: Oh wow, you have such a huge dick.

Narrator: Don presumed his penis to be of an average size. If his dick had in fact been huge, he would probably have heard about it at this point.

Helen Truby: I want you to destroy me with your fucking cock.

Don: Do you think maybe we could just lie in the bed together and maybe put your head on my chest?

Shrink: Do you have friends IRL?
Tim: Erm, no. I used to have a lot but once I stopped playing football I sort of lost most of them. There is a girl though...
Shrink: Nice. Is she IRL?
Tim: Erm yeah. She is pretty cool.

Hannah: I am pretty sure you're like a weird guy who has some serious sexual issues and I'm just not into dealing with it.

Hannah: You have to put it back up.
Donna: I can't.
Hannah: Yes, you can. Push the fucking button.

Donna: I've allowed you a certain flexibility but right now, I have to be your mom.
Hannah: You're being a selfish bitch.
Donna: It's gone. I deleted it.

Patricia: I wouldn't bother, I changed your passwords.
Brandy: What? What is wrong with you?
Patricia: You don't seem to understand how dangerous it is out here.
Brandy: The only thing that's dangerous in this house mom is you!
Patricia: I'm protecting you.
Brandy: From what? Having a normal life?

Brandy: You're really beautiful, you know that?

Narrator: Pale Blue Dot, by Carl Sagan: "That's home. That's us. On it everyone you love, every one you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. Every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child. Every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived here on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam. 
How frequent their misunderstandings, how fervent their hatreds. Our imagined self-importance, the delusion that we have some privileged position in the universe are challenged by this point of pale light. Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark. In all this vastness, there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves. Like it or not, for the moment the Earth is where we make our stand. There is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world. To me, it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly with one another, and to preserve and cherish the pale blue dot, the only home we've ever known. 

Plot: In a society where everybody is connected to the internet, Men, Women & Children explores how internet has deeply affected our daily lives and especially our interactions with one another.

Trailer:

Review:  

   Men, Women & Children is an interesting movie that uses its protagonists to explore how today omnipresent technology is meddling in people’s life.

I’m not sure whether or not I’d watch this movie again, but I’d definitely recommend  to watch this at least once.

Technically, none of what the characters are going through is new, and none of their issues is directly caused by technology and more specifically internet. Internet simply changes/modifies how people deal with those issues and this is what the movie is about.

We therefore have Don Truby and Helen Truby played respectively by Adam Sandler and Rosemarie DeWitt, a married couple whose marriage is not what it used to be. The couple is simply bored with one another, stuck in a routine that they cannot seem to escape…until they both use internet to spice up their life through hiring an escort and finding people looking for sex. What I particularly enjoyed with their story was how it was revealed that Don Truby wasn’t missing sex as much as the intimacy and complicity of a partner, which is not something that he was going to find online. Their son Chris, on the other hand, is the victim of false sexual representations largely spread through internet and finds himself unable to adjust to what sex really is.

 Jennifer Garner’s character was probably the most despicable one. Her character embodies the fear of the unknown that is the World Wide Web and she spends most of her time trying to control and stop something that is bigger than herself. She therefore becomes controlling and paranoid, destroying lives at the same time.

Her daughter Brandy and her new love interest Tim Mooney played by Ansel Elgort are like modern times Romeo and Juliette and are extremely touching in their portrayal of two teenagers seeking comfort and understanding in each other.

Tim Mooney was probably my favorite character and I feel like many teenagers and adults will easily empathize with his character. Tim is trying to cope with a feeling of abandonment and develops an addiction in trying to escape the real world. This is nothing new and internet only provides yet another type of addiction through an online virtual game, which only wider the gap between his father and him.

Then there is Donna (Judy Greer) and Hannah Clint (Olivia Crocicchia), a mother who spends her time wishing her daughter was famous, going as far as posting indecent pictures of her youngster on the internet. She uses internet as a mean to reach her goal, only to realize that this is also what fails her as internet is accessible to everyone and anyone.

Finally, the story also follows the teenager Allison Doss who suffers from anorexia and self-esteem issues who misuses internet to comfort her in her anorexia.

Men, Women & Children therefore presents a wide variety of ordinary yet fascinating human beings, with their story partly told through an ominous narrator voiced by the fantastic Emma Thompson that I personally thoroughly enjoyed.