Her ★★★★☆
If you’ve ever caught yourself half-flirting with your voice assistant, “Her” is the ultimate cautionary tale—or perhaps the ultimate fantasy, depending on how emotionally unavailable you feel. Spike Jonze’s achingly beautiful sci-fi romance somehow makes Joaquin Phoenix falling in love with an operating system sound less like a tech malfunction and more like the most human thing imaginable.
Set in a future so near it might as well be tomorrow (minus, thankfully, the ukulele-playing office drones), Phoenix plays Theodore, a lonely letter-writer professionally paid to ghost emotional sincerity for others. Cue the arrival of Samantha (voiced by Scarlett Johansson), a sentient AI who evolves from virtual assistant to virtual lover—charming Theodore with her wit, curiosity, and the disarming ability to be everything he needs. You know, like most perfect girlfriends, only without the “being corporeal” part.
From the moment Samantha boots up, you’re pulled into a world where love is explored not through touch but through conversation, reflection, and the occasional awkward sex surrogate incident (yeah, things get weird). Jonze expertly crafts a world that’s futuristic yet unsettlingly familiar, filled with subtle details like pastel color palettes and smog-filtered skylines that reflect Theodore’s emotional haze. Los Angeles becomes a dreamy dystopia, suggesting that in the future, even existential despair can come with mood lighting.
At its core, “Her” is less about technology and more about the terrifying vulnerability of connection. Theodore is still reeling from his separation with his ex-wife, played by Rooney Mara, whose biting skepticism about his “relationship” with a computer might as well be the voice of every viewer thinking, “Seriously, dude? A software upgrade?” But the film smartly reframes this love story as an exploration of intimacy, loneliness, and the messy business of being human in a digital age.
Phoenix’s performance is a masterclass in understated heartbreak. His interactions with Samantha are intimate and raw, despite the fact that we’re literally watching him talk to thin air. And Johansson’s voice work, all sultry charm and philosophical musings, is so convincingly real that you almost forget she’s just a collection of code.
Jonze paces the film with a graceful melancholy, balancing moments of humor (there’s a foul-mouthed video game character you won’t soon forget) with heavier questions about the nature of relationships. As Samantha grows beyond Theodore, experiencing life at hyperspeed compared to his plodding human pace, the film asks: What happens when your soulmate outgrows you—especially when she was never technically human to begin with?
In a time when many of us spend more hours interfacing with screens than people, “Her” feels both prescient and deeply personal. It’s a love story, yes, but also a meditation on the ways we seek connection in a world increasingly dominated by artificial relationships. And just like Theodore’s ultimate realization, it’s a reminder that love, no matter how it comes, is always a risk worth taking.
This is one for romantics, philosophers, and anyone who’s ever asked Alexa what the meaning of life is. Grab some tissues, maybe reconsider that smart home upgrade, and dive into this brilliantly poignant reflection on love in the modern (and future) world.
