SummaryMen, Women and Children follows the story of a group of high school teenagers and their parents as they attempt to navigate the many ways the internet has changed their relationships, their communication, their self-image, and their love lives. The film attempts to stare down social issues such as video game culture, anorexia, infidelity...
SummaryMen, Women and Children follows the story of a group of high school teenagers and their parents as they attempt to navigate the many ways the internet has changed their relationships, their communication, their self-image, and their love lives. The film attempts to stare down social issues such as video game culture, anorexia, infidelity...
At times Reitman (adapting Chad Kultgen’s 2011 novel) can be a bit preachy and scolding about the pitfalls of surrendering one’s “RL” (real life) to one’s online existence, but just about any parent or any teenager seeing this film will empathize with any number of the interconnecting plot lines.
A huge improvement on the muddled melodrama of Labor Day, Men, Women and Children is still a flawed Jason Reitman film. Its scope is too big, his ambitions too high.
I saw the beginning of the movie in a plane, and later read it had gotten mainly negative reviews. After I had seen the movie completely, I could not have been more flabbergasted: it does away with linear story telling and the concentration on only one character or two, and instead tries to weave a pattern situated in suburban USA. This is juxtaposed by a narrative about humanities place in cosmos which not only allowed me another handle on the implications of the internet, social media, smart phones on human relations and identities which are the movie's topic, but was, for me, intensely poetic. The film does not have a positive hero, but shows people entangled in their limitations and illusions. never loosing, however, the human touch which evolves in short but intense dialogues.
Watching the movie was at the same time gripping and gave me the enjoyment of a rhythmic pattern, like hearing a symphony. I think it is a great movie which should have won prices.
I absolutely loved this film - gorgeous cinematography, amazing interconnected story and characters put flawlessly, and just soul in where something should be soulless. I had my own doubts before I saw this movie, and how most likely it would be shallow and only focus on dumb sex of adults and teens and not actually have a detailed storyline. Completely wrong. Adam Sandler brings his most quiet acting to this film, and it works almost perfectly. Ansel Elgort and Kaitlyn Delver's performance and chemistry on screen is subtle yet so beautiful and aimless. Every characters felt real - and each one is given their own time to shine and show emotion. These scenes of everyday modern life, cut with scenes of a universal satellite alone in space and a single picture of the lone earth... merely a speck in space. However, no matter how we might see ourselves as only microscopic dust in the large galaxy, we are humans. And our human life matters. And that's why this film defies all stereotypes and brings a beautiful nuance. It lives.
Audiences could use a wise and probing movie about the meaning of our increasingly digital, techno-juiced lives.Men, Women & Children is about half that movie.
This painfully well-meaning but largely unpersuasive bid for cross-generational understanding feels at once of-the-moment and too obvious by half, like a less overblown version of “Crash” for the information superhighway.
With Men, Women & Children and the equally laborious “Labor Day,” Reitman has gotten trapped amid the crumbling edifice of Hollywood. It’s turning him old before his time.
Never have so many critics been so wrong about a movie. This film spoke to me. I guess it didn't speak to them. Perhaps they don't get the message or perhaps they just don't like the message, so they dismiss it. If he were still alive, I don't think that Jean-Paul Sartre would dismiss it, though.
There's no shortage of interesting material - looking into the lives of many different types of people. Nevertheless, Men, Women & Children never seems to amount to much of anything.
Director Jason Reitman had a good thing going for it, but unfortunately the film's execution was mediocre at best. I'm always interested to watch films about social interactions and media, but this one not only brought nothing new to the table, but addressed several points and ideas that it feels like we've all seen before too many times in the past. The film also seemingly tried to deliver several different messages to its audience to the point where I wasn't sure what it was trying to tell me. For the most part, the acting was fine. However, some of it felt stale and emotionless, especially from Jennifer Garner's character. Adam Sandler and Rosemarie DeWitt, who played husband and wife, felt like a waste. The mother and daughter plot point with Judy Greer allowing her daughter to act like a total slut was just plain ridiculous. Surprisingly, the strongest performances were those of Ansel Elgort's and Kaitlyn Dever's, who played love interests. Overall, it had an interesting concept, but with just ok acting, clumsy storytelling as well as an oddly placed and unnecessary narration from Emma Thompson, and a lack of closure from a lot of the different plot points by the time the film ended weighed this down big time.
I don't know if this movie is suppose to be a spoof of life or a bad period peace film.
The film follows the story **** of high school teenagers and their parents as they attempt to navigate the many ways the internet has changed their relationships, their communication, their self-image, and their love lives. The film attempts to stare down social issues such as video game culture, anorexia, infidelity, fame hunting, and the proliferation of illicit material on the internet.
From the brilliant mind who bough us such great movies like: Juno and Up in the air, Jason Reitman who is best at period peace films and letting the character's carry the film on their own backs, so what happened here?. How did this movie turn out messy. It had a great idea, great story and a brilliant writer behind it and the film could be really good, but no the writing this time is actually pretty awful. Men, Women & Children feels a miss opportunity of being great.
It's good to see Adam Sandler in a role that doesn't need him to be goofy, over the top and straight up embarrassing. I sawed Mr. Sandler in many different roles in his past career and in this movie he plays like Lester Burnham from American Beauty, you know his world around him feels unbalance, he starts looking at other women for love because his wife doesn't like him any more so basically his like Lester a little bit. Sandler did okay of what he's got in this movie and so dose the other cast in the movie.
But the writing in this movie is really off and what I mean is this movie is trying to basic show social media today and how people are so glued to their screens on their phones or computers, but in this movie it didn't work because everybody is so cardboard cut out that I didn't give a fuss about them and the message in the story itself.
The directing is really off as well. Yes there was some really good shots in the movie, but i think the director took a lot of bad risk that made the movie go blah.
Overall Men, Women & Children feels like a big miss step of being a great movie. A lot of things didn't work in this film and when they are parts that do show greatness it just get's over shadow by left over crap from a other bad film.
I was a little shocked when I first saw the meta-score for this movie. However now that I've seen it I completely understand. It's the absolute lowest common denominator in terms of exploring the subject. Only the storyline with Jennifer Garner her daughter and the X football player is worth exploring. Most of the rest is just salacious nonsense.