He's the strange paramour easily titillated by running through a crowd, and the man amused by a raunchy doodle. He is a quirky guy who plays videogames, wears high-waisted pants, and loves to cry. Club has said, 'The Manic Pixie Dream Girl exists solely.to teach broodingly soulful young men to embrace life and its infinite mysteries and adventures.' But in Her, the situation is reversed.

In fact, though we see no physical embodiment of Samantha - and glean just a bit of her existence outside Theodore - she is the one who instigates the relationship and uses it to evolve. It is Samantha who introduces the possibility that they might have a relationship rather than a perfunctory user/interface rapport. She exhibits moodiness and emotion in their blossoming relationship well before he does. Samantha isn't a jumble of quirks with no greater purpose or life she grows and evolves over the course of the movie, showcasing a myriad of interests and pursuits outside of music and Theodore. From day one, she stresses that he must consider her as a person, not a computer. Theodore doesn't impose a certain sexuality on Samantha she prompts him to imagine she has a human body with shoulders and itches - one in which she can experience the world as he does, and one they can later fantasize about. In time, she becomes a Summer (Zooey Deschanel, of 500 Days of Summer), who's unable to be the 'perfect woman' and offer the happy ending her boyfriend desperately wants.īut here, as with Her's predecessors, it is not as simple as one sad man meeting one woman who lives to make him happy. By contrast, Samantha is a Sam (Natalie Portman, of Garden State), invigorated by life and eager to share it with her gloomy guys. He's also a Calvin (Paul Dano, of Ruby Sparks), angry when the object of his love finds a community and life outside of their relationship. Theodore is another Lars (Ryan Gosling, of Lars and the Real Girl), creating a fantasy to help heal his damaged soul and using Samantha to reemerge from his shell and heal his pain.

While the vast majority of critics have lavished praise on Her, one writer at Jezebel questioned its continuation of desires to sexualize technology, stating that Theodore 'imposes a feminine sexuality on her.' Another at In These Times likened the romance to a sexist objectification of women that must contort 'to prove that Theodore is not raping Samantha.' Still another at agreed that Samantha was a MPDG because she 'composes faux-Debussy piano interludes during down time and has infinite patience for her oft-moody partner.' The term was invented to designate quirky ladies who exist only to redeem otherwise miserable men, and has since become a catch-all for dissatisfaction about poorly developed female characters and storylines.

In other words, Her immediately heads into Manic Pixie Dream Girl (MPDG) territory - that awful space we've talked about before. By night, he's a miserable loner facing his first divorce as he cues up 'melancholy' songs and plays a video game featuring a tiny, sexist turd of a character. By day, he's an emotional surrogate: A freelance writer for strangers who can't find the words to craft emotional letters for their loved ones. She asks for permission to access Theodore's files, and when he expresses surprise at having a rather human conversation with his computer, she retorts: 'You're not! You're having it with me.' Her 'intuition,' as she calls it, allows her to evolve with every action as she quickly differentiates herself from a usual OS. Theodore is instantly invigorated by the voice's seeming humanity and actions.

Her spike jonze broll