I started to watch Her last week. I’m going to disappoint a lot of you by telling you that I really didn’t care for it. In fact, I didn’t finish it. And like a good critic, I have a firm “don’t review it if you didn’t finish it” policy. I have made a few exceptions over the years, but I don’t anymore, not since I have this space to talk out what bothered me and maybe relate it to other issues. So if you think I missed the point of the movie, well, maybe I did! But I didn’t finish it because this was enough to keep me from getting into it.

The problem was that, in order to be worth the hero’s energy, the woman had to be perfect. Honestly, it kind of felt as though he needed all his human interactions to be with people who were perfect for him, but let that go for now. I also saw Weird Science for the first time this summer, and while that does end with the boys’ realizing that normal human women are fine, they, too, go for the “build a perfect woman in a lab” option. I’m not sure there’s a movie where women build a perfect man in a lab.

This also ties in to all those movies about women who undergo makeovers to be perfect; arguably, it is the ultimate logical extension of them. Why bother starting with a woman who may have flaws that you just haven’t discovered yet? Just build your own from scratch. And, yes, it is my understanding that that turns out not to work in either of the movies I’ve mentioned, but my impression of Her is that Mopey Rich Guy (because there’s no way you can live his lifestyle without plenty of money) will just take that as a reason to not even bother. Certainly not as a reason to put in his own effort.

Relationships are, after all, about effort. I’m writing this two and a half hours before it’s scheduled to post. One kid poked himself in the eye last night and is still in pain, so I’m waiting for his doctor’s office to open. The other kid was restless and fussy last night, meaning I didn’t get a ton of sleep, either. So my boyfriend is giving me twenty minutes to write something real quick because I forgot to do it sooner, and then I have to call the doctor’s office as soon as they open. This is messy and complicated, and I can’t imagine the kind of guy who always ends up in these movies being willing to deal with that kind of real-life effort.

Women talk a lot about emotional labor. (In fact, the joke is that someone once asked what that was, and my friend’s head nearly exploded as she tried to figure out whether to tell him or not.) Oh, some men do, too, but I think this has more become a conversation in women’s spaces. And in Her, we have a hero whose literal job is doing emotional labor for other people while pretty well failing to be willing to do any in his own life. That doesn’t work. Or, if you try it, the person you’re relying on is likely to get sick of it and walk out. And it’s not a failing of humanity; it’s you. You did that to them.

Maybe I would’ve liked Her better if I’d stuck through to the end. And maybe I could’ve stuck through to the end if I hadn’t seen it as a pattern of failure in media, that no one ever seems to have this conversation. It’s like the lazy, hacky joke about how men should be afraid when women in their lives say, “We need to talk.” Because Heaven forbid you sit down and hash out the issues in your relationship before it falls apart. Far better to create the perfect woman instead and then mope around when even she doesn’t want to put up with you.