Men, Women & Children (2014), R, ★

Rosemarie Dewitt and Adam Sandler in bed maybe checking someone's Facebook.

The Internet. It is almost one of the greatest inventions supporting also a few of the greatest inventions such as the computer and the IPod/IPhone/IPad. It's a source that can guide you to research information about certain things about subjects that you question or have a hard time figure out. I don't imply the latter by cheating to get something done. However, the Internet is sort of a con because it interferes the relationship between two people or more. When certain people who care are about you are worried, they will not give you the benefit of the doubt and will search what is going on. Sometimes, it will help and sometimes, they will invade your privacy. This movie is an intriguing premise on paper, but what is left on-screen is basically the premise, not a story.

Don Truby (Adam Sandler) is a father who tries to access pornography on his son's computer because his own computer will be infected with malware. He looks back at when he was his own son's age when he got access to his father's porn material. He worries that he will not fill the same place as his son. He masturbates to the pornographic material that is on his computer. He is bored with his life revolving around him.

At the local high school, Patricia Beltmeyer (Jennifer Garner) sees that her daughter, Brandy (Kaitlyn Dever), has vandalized an internet safety poster to a derogatory headline which Patricia knows what she is saying on the poster.

Hannah (Olivia Crocicchia) is a student and a cheerleader and brags to her schoolmates, including Allison (Elena Kampouris), about her sex life. Allison, Hannah and some girls text in a very bad attitude about each other, meaning they bad-mouth one another. Hannah's mom, Joan (Judy Greer), buys her an outfit and she posts photos of her in skimpy outfits on the "private gallery" on Hannah's website.

Don and his wife, Helen (Rosemary DeWitt) schedule to have sex while their son, Chris (Travis Trope) is looking at hard-core porn. At the mall, Hannah and Chris has some sort of the weird relationship where they are "sexting" each other about how they would go about to having sex. Chris is into sadomasochism as Hannah is just to doing it the right away and just wants to "ride him". This movie is basically what it is: It is back-and-forth communication about disturbing subjects mostly focusing on appearances, embarrassment, and sex.

I wonder what these children are going to do here.

This movie was overbearing with material that goes back and forth with their subjects and how they are maintaining their feelings for one another and how these consequences will overlap with these "subplots". The movie just makes certain remarks about their sex life, pregnancies, masturbation, how the guy did it, and penis jokes. If you take all that away and take it two notches down, the movie would have been an hour and 10-an hour and 20 minutes long. And, then, beyond that, we hear dialogue of small anecdotes and people deleting somebody's material off the computer. It drags and drags forever.

What is unforgiving is that these characters have no personality, but, therefore, it is supported by the only strong element: the acting. Adam Sandler takes a break from his comic chops to give a good performance, but it's just his character trying to get back in the game with his wife. Rosemary DeWitt also gives a sublime performance, but her character never develops at all. Jennifer Garner, JK Simmons, Ansel Elgort, and many others try what they can with this inept screenplay. It seems that the characters just do what they do to move the movie along. The movie is like good performances chopped into small scenes that arbitrarily is edited in such a complicated fashion that you could not care less on what happens to every character. Plus, it's overstuffed with many characters.

Jason Reitman, the acclaimed director of Juno and Up in the Air, has missed the boat twice with Labor Day and with this movie. Actually, he missed the harbor on this one. He plants an idea into a movie that is worth thinking about but is not supplanted by great stories that is not worth seeing on-screen. This movie needed some organization, character development, less characters, and dialing down on the aspect of digital communication. We get it! It really distracts us from our reality and also gets parents concerned.

This movie is overwrought with themes of depressing reality that it has to be made up by inserting melodrama into some of the characters that is ultimately unforgiving and you sit there rolling your eyes. The ending seems to end on a deleted scene that is particularly random. This is no doubt Jason Reitman's worst film and he needs to look back at his earlier material to see what made us engage in the story and its characters. It is funny that what prevented me from giving it zero stars is the performances, notably Adam Sandler's. This is a humiliating and a very disappointing film to sit through. Watch Disconnect, a much better film about this similar center of attention of digital communication.

*