Her

The future is both a scary and promising prospect. And Hollywood has all kinds of ideas of what it might look like, most of them not so promising. Just in 2013 we had Oblivion, After Earth, The Purge, World War Z, and Elysium: none of which had a very positive outlook toward the future of life on planet Earth. Now we have Her, a certainly more realistic imagining of what the future might look like...but it also is certainly no less a bleak imagining.


Theodore Twombly is a very romantic man. He's so romantic he spends his days professionally writing love letters for people who are unable to do so themselves. Unfortunately this very romantic man has a harder time with personal relationships: he is a divorcee who spends his time at home playing video games instead of out interacting with people. During his day to day activities he sees an ad for the first ever artificial intelligent Operating System. His purchase of this OS may change his life as he starts to look at life in a new way. He is experiencing things he hasn't felt in a long time: happiness, fun, and possibly....love?

Her is a strange sort of love story. It's also a strangely touching and sweet love story. Her makes us think about what we really think love to be and the possibilities for love that surround us. But here is where Her started to disturb me: It was an all too real possibility for what the future in this very technological minded world could be. One where the only interaction is between the earpieces in our ears and the phones in our hands. One where the fake people in our ears are the people we care about most in life... and that life doesn't sound very much like living to me.