Reitman covers the powers and perils of technology in rom- com
That title pretty much covers everybody, although Jason Reitman’s newest film might also have been called Mothers, Fathers and Offspring ( First World Edition). The ambitious subject is nothing less than how we live our lives in an increasingly digital- mediated world.
With much to say and only two hours to say it, the film necessarily stakes out extremes. At one end is Patricia ( Jennifer Garner ), who follows her daughter’s every move in the online world with the thoroughness of a prison warden.
Giving new meaning to lax parenting, meanwhile, is Donna ( Judy Greer), a failed actress determined to help her daughter find the fame that eluded her. And if the price of future celebrity includes selling borderline- risqué pictures of the high- schooler online, then so be it.
Somewhere in the middle are Adam Sandler and Rosemarie DeWitt as married couple Don and Helen . Online porn leads Don to investigate the services of an escort, while Helen follows up on a TV ad for Ashley Madison, a dating site whose slogan is: “Life is short. Have an affair.”
Given the breadth of the story, and Reitman’s wise choice not to try to connect everybody in Crash- like fashion, some sections of Men, Women & Children work better than others. More effective though strikingly unusual is Reitman’s choice of a framing device — the Voyager 1 space probe . Over images of the craft sailing past Jupiter, Saturn and beyond, the voice of Emma Thompson introduces characters and dispassionately narrates some of their doings.
Best not to over analyze that, but we’re clearly meant to understand the relative size of our troubles and triumphs in the vastness of the universe, and perhaps also to relate to the meaning of the voyage. Like that ship, we continue to push outward, questing.