I was pleasantly surprised by this movie. Produced by Drew Barrymore’s producing partner Nancy Juvonen, who also produced Fever Pitch, another unconventionally good romantic comedy, He’s Just Not That into You rises above its awkward title. It is populated by a large ensemble of rich and beautiful people (Jennifer Aniston, Jennifer Connelly, and Ginnifer Goodwin (narrowly averting a Jennifer-trifecta with her unconventional spelling), Ben Affleck, Scarlett Johansson, and more), who nevertheless struggle with their romantic lives, showing the rest of us ordinary folk that money can’t buy me love. But it sure does make for nice parties, and restaurants, not to mention the yacht that Affleck (I’m sure his character had a name) moves to after an absurd disagreement with Aniston over the merits of marriage (which are numerous, but never mentioned) and its drawbacks (which, apparently, are that it’s an unnecessary bit of legalism – an argument that falls completely flat in an age where a class of citizen is desperately fighting for the legal protections of marriage).

But there are touching and funny moments in the screenplay by Abby Kohn and Marc Silverstein. Goodwin plays the central character, an irrepressibly optimistic and cheerful young woman who cannot find a boyfriend. It would have been nice if at least some of her non-starter romances had been due to the man being a loser, which seems to me to be a much more realistic scenario than this intelligent pretty woman failing to excite interest in the men she meets on various set-up dates. Connelly and Bradley Cooper play the movie’s only married couple, but not happily so. Cooper is seduced by Johansson’s sultry singer while Connelly obsesses not over his fidelity, but whether or not he is sneaking cigarettes on the side. Gigi (Goodwin), gets lousy advice from her girlfriends, and excellent advice on the callow and simple nature of men from a restaurant manager or owner or bartender or some combination of those (who is rich and has a lot of one-night stands). The best moments, like those in Fever Pitch, are when the characters are completely honest with each other, but still have to make difficult decisions about how to handle their relationships. It avoids the classic gimmick of romantic comedies where conflict is not inherent to the relationship but merely a result of misunderstandings and deceptions. These characters have real issues: Is a marriage worth saving? Is a marriage worth starting when one is uncertain about the virtues of the institution? Will the flighty person settle down and commit? There are no profound answers to these questions in the movie, but at least they are confronted honestly.