[douglasdickel]

Spike Jonze's Her is actually a terrible movie
Her can be seen as a response to Lost in Translation. 
And the comparison does Jonze no favors. 
(Ryu Spaeth)

(...) Lost in Translation is a triumph of oblique storytelling. The characters say one thing — or often, nothing at all — while the camera says another, conveying rich undercurrents of meaning. Johansson and Murray may be joking about starting a jazz band or silently sharing a cigarette at a karaoke bar, but what is actually happening beneath these banal surfaces is exhilaratingly apparent. This method finds its greatest expression in the famous last scene, in which Murray and Johansson tearfully part with words that can't be heard by the audience. The scene is little more than a street in Tokyo, two actors, and a kiss, which allows the film to achieve both a huge emotional payoff and a kind of cinematic purity.

In contrast, Her is drowning in words — and what vapid words they are. Because Samantha has no face — no downcast eyes to hint at deeper feeling, no quivering lips to express an inner trembling — she is maddeningly verbose. While more physically expressive, Theodore also becomes trapped in this cage of words, and their relationship is defined by the blunt vocalization of every urge and emotion: I'm depressed, I'm horny, I'm happy, I'm jealous, I'm annoyed, I'm in love.

(...) None of this would be even worth mentioning were it not for the glowing reception Her has received in the mainstream press, which could very well land this mawkish mess an Oscar for writing, of all things. But perhaps we shouldn't be too surprised, since mawkishness is having something of a moment in American culture, popping up most egregiously in the more recent films of Wes Anderson, but also in fashionable literature and broad swathes of indie rock music.