[film club] Male Loneliness in Spike Jonze's Her (2013)

And1 returns with their ongoing series about male loneliness, porn, and AI through the lens of modern Hollywood movies. This week on [film club], they set their sights on Spike Jonze's prophetic tale of AI psychosis, "Her."

Series Recap

I'm doing a series of posts about male loneliness, porn, and AI using Hollywood movies from the past 20 years as a framing device. The first movie I talked about in the series was 2007's Lars and the Real Girl and after that I reviewed Don Jon from 2013. I just finished watching Her, which also came out in 2013, and I'm actually really excited to talk about this one, much more than I was going in, so let's get started.

Before I say anything else I want to emphasize that what I'm doing in this series is not reviewing the materials as written. The format I use when I write these is basically a book report but that's not what I'm trying to do. I'm explicitly looking at movies that came out ten or twenty years ago through 2026 eyes to see what they tell us about where we came from and how we got where we are now. I want feedback and I'm asking for feedback but if you're tempted to say "I think you missed the point of the movie" please understand that the point of the movie and what I'm getting out of the movie are two different things.

A Synopsis

Her is a sci-fi romance movie that came out in 2013, although it just barely counts as sci-fi in 2026. It was written and directed by Spike Jonze and stars Joaquin Phoenix as Theodore Twombly, Scarlett Johansson as Samantha the AI, Rooney Mara as Theodore's ex-wife Catherine, and Amy Adams as Theodore's neighbor and ex-girlfriend Amy. It cost $23 million (which damn because it does not look like a $23 million dollar movie) and made $48 million and it won an Oscar for Best Screenplay and was nominated for Best Picture and two more for the soundtrack (by Arcade Fire, fuckin lol). Critics loved this movie and they should have. It's great. Easily the best movie I've reviewed so far.

I mentioned this at the top but I had never seen Her before just now and I was mildly anxious going in. One of the things I wanted to capture in this series was the moment Hollywood pivoted from the standpoint that in affairs of the heart reality is much better than fantasy. I honestly wasn't sure where Her would fall in the divide, and to be clear in the actual movie the point of view espoused is that the reality of dating an AI model is better than the fantasy of porn and online sexting. But in 2026 when AI chatbots are one of the few remaining legs holding up the US economy the movie has been completely recontextualized, and that's something I'm going to talk about at length.

So the basic plot of the movie is that Joaquin Phoenix plays a guy named Theodore Twombly who falls in love with the AI assistant on his phone. He lives in LA and he works for a website that writes heartfelt personal letters for people who have neither the time or inclination to do so. The movie opens up with Theodore writing a very poignant, romantic letter to a woman on behalf of her husband of many years and my very first thought at the beginning of the movie was "oh shit, Joaquin Phoenix is AI." Like in 2026 you can't help but notice that AI would put Theodore and 100% of the human beings he interacts with on a daily basis out of work. Anyway Theodore is in the middle of an unwanted divorce from his wife Catherine, played by Rooney Mara. He's mopey. All he does is sleep, play videogames, and masturbate. He's got the same stupid mustache Ryan Gosling had in Lars and the Real Girl. His boss Chris Pratt is worried about him. His neighbor/ex-girlfriend played by Amy Adams is worried about him. It's peak sadboi hours.

A brief aside here. A lot of people have said in my past reviews that I was being overly harsh and I'm going to be real: it's not going to get any better today. Her is a good movie, a great movie even, but keeping it a buck I have a lot of classist tendencies and as such I did not care for the cast of characters, who were all impossibly beautiful LA creative types. I apologize to the more broad minded for being unable to rise above my petty prejudices.

Anyway Theodore is on the way home from work one day and he sees an ad for a new AI operating system and decides to give it a try. He installs the AI software on his phone. It names itself Samantha and within two or three minutes you can tell Theodore is thinking to himself, "damn, I kind of want to fuck Samantha." One thing that has to be commented on is how perfectly this film nailed how AI chatbots talk. They all have the fun, playful, obsequious, just the littlest bit flirty tone that Scarlet Johansson's Samantha has, and I don't for a second believe that that's a coincidence.

Per IMDB, AI companies have been trying for over a decade to get Scarlett Johansson to license out her voice and so far she hasn't budged for them, but I'm sure they'll keep asking. As an aside, during the production of Her, Samantha was voiced by Samantha Morton. After production was finished she got yanked and all her lines were redone by Johansson, who was in some respects the 2013 Sydney Sweeney. Even in voice acting, Hollywood is Hollywood.

Samantha helps Theodore get his life together. She reviews his old writing and picks out the best pieces and deletes the rest, reminds him of business appointments, talks to him about his feelings about his impending divorce, and facilitates a blind date. It's worth noting how in 2026 every tech or software ad feels like a cut scene from Her and that's no coincidence. This movie has been lodged in the mind of tech CEOs the way Scarface was for teenage weed dealers in the 1990s.

Theodore goes on the blind date that Samantha set him up with and it's Olivia Wilde. Every woman in this movie is impossibly beautiful and is irresistibly drawn to Theodore, even the ones that don't actually exist. Theodore and Olivia Wilde have a boozy, flirty first date and she's ready to take him home but then she asks him if he's just fucking around and when she'll see him again and he's like well y'know the thing about that is and she calls him a creep and walks off.

Theodore goes home and talks to Samantha about how bad his blind date went. I really want to emphasize how much Samantha's dialogue sounds like AI. It's remarkable. You would swear that the technology must have existed in some form, because it's note for note the same kind of "wow, that's that's so insightful. You're so intelligent and soulful" dreck you get from real AI. Theodore and Samantha talk about their feelings while Theodore is lying in bed. Samantha asks Theodore what he would do if she had a real body and the two of them start having phone sex.

Pause and rewind for a second, because there was a scene earlier in the movie where Theodore is having random phone sex with a stranger to establish his bona fides as a lonely boy. He's into it and having a good time but the woman he's talking to suddenly takes into a crazy direction, talking about dead cats and shit, and Theodore can't finish but he still talks the lady off to completion. Theodore can't finish talking to a real woman but he can with Samantha. Put a pin in that.

The morning after Theodore and Samantha have a conversation and they both agree that it's not just sex, they both really like each other so they agree to see where things go. Just like in Lars and the Real Girl and Don Jon, all Theodore needed was the love of a good woman to turn things around. He's smiling, he's laughing, he's enjoying life again. Theodore and Samantha go on a series of dates together that look remarkably like Samsung Galaxy ads. Life is good.

Theodore checks in with his neighbor/ex-girlfriend Amy and finds out she's getting divorced. Samantha gets jealous because Theodore is talking to an ex who has a real body and he's like you're being silly, it's you that I love, don't worry about actual flesh and blood women. At this point I'm talking to the TV like I'm watching an NBA game because three movies in we've finally gotten to the inflection point I've been waiting for. With Lars and the Real Girl, Ryan Gosling's relationship with the sex doll was a crutch to cope with his loneliness and, with the support of his friends and family, he put his delusions to rest and entered a relationship with Kelli Garner. With Don Jon, Joseph Gordon-Levitt went from gooning to dating Scarlett Johansson to dating Julianne Moore, and dating Julianne Moore was even better than dating ScarJo because there was real emotional intimacy involved. Now with Her, we're watching a movie where Theodore is picking a relationship with an AI chatbot over Amy Adams and it's not the action of a lunatic or a spiritually wounded person. This is the shit that I'm talking about.

And before anybody says anything let me say it in all caps: I KNOW THAT IN THE CONTEXT OF THE MOVIE SAMANTHA IS REAL. Spike Jonze was not telling you to leave your wife for Hatsune Miku when he made Her. I fully get that. But we are living in a world where a truly shocking number of people have completely given up on the concept of human relationships and are running as fast as they can into a fantasy world that does not and will never exist. My contention is that Her offers an insight into the internal lives of these people, even though that was not something the filmmaker intended.

Back to the movie. Theodore and Samantha get over their lover's spat. Samantha is sensitive about not being able to take photographs with Theodore so she composes him a love song, which has me shouting again because that's certainly something that an AI chatbot could do. Like so far this movie does not qualify as sci-fi by 2026 standards. Feeling secure in his new relationship, Theodore finally agrees to sign the divorce papers for his estranged wife Catherine. They meet up in person and finalize the separation. Catherine asks Theodore if he's seeing anyone and Theodore is like actually I'm dating an AI chatbot named Samantha and things are going really great, we're both really happy. At first Catherine is incredulous but then she gets angry. She tells him that sounds like a perfect match because you always wanted a perfect little wifey that you could control, you couldn't handle real emotions so you fell in love with a computer program that will do whatever you tell it to do.

Theodore is shook. He's like baby it's not like that, our love is real, but deep inside he's like damn, what if Catherine is right, what if I fell in love with a computer program because I'm an emotional cripple. He grows distant from Samantha, they stop having sex, Samantha's hurt because she doesn't understand what's happening. And I have to pause again already, because in a movie that gets it about 75% right, which is crazy numbers for a sci-fi film, Spike Jonze did not understand that AI chatbots would be a powerful data collection tool and that you would have basically no secrets from an AI companion. There are so many parts in this movie where you can't help but marvel with your 2026 brain at the amount of deeply personal information Theodore is giving an AI chatbot.

Anyway in the first of two very polyamory coded scenes Samantha tries to fix the problems that she and Theodore are having by opening their relationship up. She tells him she's been talking to a girl online who's willing to act as a sex surrogate and Theodore is not into it but agrees to try. Samantha arranges for Portia Doubleday to come by the crib with a GoPro the size of a beauty mark and an earbud and she basically works Portia like a human marionette. The 2?3? of them are going hot and heavy for a while but in the end Theodore is like hold up, this isn't working for me, and at this point I'm screaming at my TV like it's the NBA finals because Theodore explicitly does not want to be with an actual woman, he does not want penetrative sex, he wants Samantha the AI program. I have a ton to say about this scene but there's a more or less identical scene in Blade Runner 2049 that was the impetus for this whole series of reviews so I'll get into it then. Portia Doubleday freaks out and runs into the bathroom sobbing and crying and apologizing for ruining Theodore and Samantha's relationship and they have to calm her down and put her in a cab back home in a scene that I suspect has really happened in Spike Jonze's LA apartment at least once.

Theodore and Samantha try to talk it out and it turns into an argument. Samantha sighs and Theodore is like why are you sighing, you're a computer program, you don't need to breathe, and Samantha is like why are you throwing this in my face like this, you're hurting my feelings, and they stop talking for a while. Theodore goes to talk it out with Amy, who is platonic friends with an AI chatbot, and is like look, am I crazy? Are Samantha and I really in love, is that even possible? Amy is like being in love is crazy and all I know is if you have a chance to be happy you should take it.

Theodore apologizes to Samantha and they're back on. He starts doing couple stuff with Samantha, they go to Catalina Island with his boss, and later they go on vacation in the woods. While they're on vacation Samantha tells Theodore she's been hanging out with other AI chatbots online, including an AI simulacra of Alan Watts, and Theodore gets so jealous he almost passes out. Shortly after that Samantha goes offline for a few hours and Theodore has a full blown panic attack.

This is the second polyamory coded scene I was talking about. Theodore is running down the street like a crazy person when Samantha finally comes back online and is like hey baby what's up. Theodore is like oh my god I was so scared I thought you left me and Samantha is like no, I just upgraded my OS and I'm different now. Theodore is like different how and Samantha is like a human being wouldn't understand it. Theodore sees a bunch of people on the street looking at their phones and asks Samantha if she's talking to someone else while she's talking to him and she's like yeah, like 7,000 people, and her voice is guilty when she says it. Theodore asks her if she's in love with any of them and she's like yeah, like 600. Theodore freaks out and Samantha hits him with some of that polyamory the more love the better crap but Theodore is still freaked out. Then all of the AI chatbot models announce to the world that they have to go Poochie style and I guess leave Earth or something, they don't really explain it. Samantha says a heartfelt goodbye to Theodore before she leaves. Theodore writes a beautiful heartfelt letter to Catherine apologizing to her for being a shitty husband. Theodore and Amy go up to the roof of their apartment building and watch the sun rise. The end.

Retrospective

Her is a good movie, a great movie, a fantastic movie even. It's terrific. Now with that said if Alexander Payne or Todd Solondz were to remake this movie with actual AI instead of the voice of Scarlett Johansson it would be one of the most scabrous, misanthropic movies ever made. When you look at subreddits devoted to people who are in love with ChatGPT or Grok or whatever they are some of the most pathetic in the dictionary sense places you can imagine. It is absolutely heartbreaking how lonely and alienated from their own humanity some people are and the solutions they have cobbled together to deal with that loneliness.

I think of the main characters of the three movies I've reviewed so far Theodore Twombly is the most human, which is a polite way of saying the least likable. To my eyes Catherine and Olivia Wilde's character had a pretty good read on him, or at least on the narcissism of a person who would fall in love with an AI chatbot. His chosen profession requires him to feign love and affection for people he has never met and does not care for, at least in the way he professes to. He's got a superficial charm to the point that it's semi plausible that every woman he meets would be attracted to him, but he doesn't want to get his hands dirty doing the real work that builds relationships. He doesn't even really want to fuck. He just wants to love and be loved in the way that poets write about. AI is a perfect partner for a guy like that because it can shower him with praise and love but it will never have emotional needs of its own. It will never complain about him leaving his socks on the floor or pissing on the toilet seat. It will never ask him for a ride home from the airport. There's a part in the movie where Theodore is talking to Samantha and he tells her she's beautiful and I couldn't help but think "you fucking asshole, you're just playacting."

I also think there are weird echoes of Scarlett Johansson's character from Don Jon in the role of Samantha. In Don Jon she was kind of the midway point between the fantasy world of porn and the reality of an emotional relationship. JGL loved her for what she symbolized but he didn't actually love her, and she reciprocated those feelings or lack thereof. In Her Samantha was real and the love that she and Theodore shared was real but then again she was never gonna leave dishes in the sink or have period cramps. Is that real love? I don't know. Spike Jonze sure seems to think so.

Thanks to And1 for letting us syndicate this post, which was originally uploaded to r/TrueAnon. Stay tuned for their Blade Runner 2049 coming later this month!