He’s Just Not That Into You (2009/Warner DVD)

 

Picture: C+/C     Sound: C     Extras: D     Film: D

 

 

Ken Kwapis is a lite director and as Sesame Street – Follow That Bird is reissued, he tries to handle adult relationships in a slightly comic (and slight) way as he tried in co-directing the messy He Said, She Said with He’s Not That Just Into You, a really bad film that proves that all-star casts can be a sign of a bad project wasting a bunch of actors, some of whom are not as good as others.  Drew Barrymore, Jennifer Connelly, Scarlett Johansson, Ben Affleck, Jennifer Aniston and others make this into something like a bad TV movie meets a bad TV soap opera meets a bad TV sitcom.

 

Yes, it is that bad and just boring like the characters, situations and none of them are believable for a minute.  Running a shockingly long 129 minutes, but feels more like a complete TV series that rightly was cancelled.  The more you watch, the more you realize why these characters are unhappy or phony to begin with. 

 

The anamorphically enhanced 1.85 X 1 is on the soft side, has lame composition and no really memorable shots.  The flipside of the DVD has an even worse and pathetic 1.33 X 1 pan & scan version for anyone with an analog TV that still works.  The Dolby Digital 5.1 mix is really poor, seems transferred at a lower volume until you realize the mix is that flat.  It is worse on the pan & scan side and you should be careful of the volume of playback.  The only extra is an awful audio commentary track by Kwapis that is to be as avoided as this whole production.

 

 

-   Nicholas Sheffo