He's Just Not That Into You (2009)

and the Women Who Stopped Waiting

An ensemble comedy about women reading, and misreading, the signals men send. What it teaches about living on crumbs of contact, checking everything, a lie about a cigarette, seven years of "never," and who the film asks to do the work.

He’s Just Not That Into You (2009). Directed by Ken Kwapis, from the advice book by Greg Behrendt and Liz Tuccillo. Ginnifer Goodwin as Gigi, Jennifer Aniston as Beth, Jennifer Connelly as Janine, Scarlett Johansson as Anna and Drew Barrymore as Mary, with Ben Affleck, Bradley Cooper and Kevin Connolly.

She waited by the phone, reading meaning into every silence.

This page belongs to On Screen. It is a refusal, and a gentle one: an ensemble comedy about a handful of women reading, and misreading, the signals men send. It’s also, with Jexi, one of two films here made after phones, and it’s built around a pattern that the phone made easier than ever: the bare minimum of contact that keeps you hoping.

Like every entry on the On Screen page, it reads a story for the pattern it teaches, and makes no claim about anyone’s diagnosis. The film’s title is a piece of advice, and it’s useful advice, but this page also notices where the film puts the work: almost always on the women, to read the men better, rather than on the men, to say what they mean.

No line of the film’s dialogue is quoted on this page. There is no quote page for it that could be checked, so everything here is drawn from the plot of record.

The Story

After a lukewarm date with a real-estate agent, Conor, Gigi waits for him to call, and reads hope into every sign. A bar owner, Alex, befriends her and tells her she’s misreading the signals. She starts reading his helpfulness as interest, and he turns her down. Later, when she’s moved on, he realizes he loves her.

Gigi’s coworker Janine is renovating her house while her husband, Ben, grows attracted to a yoga teacher, Anna. Ben tells Anna he only married Janine because she gave him an ultimatum. When Janine finds cigarette butts in the yard, he blames the workmen. He confesses an affair; Janine blames herself and tries to save the marriage. When she finds his cigarettes again, she leaves his clothes folded on the stairs with a note asking for a divorce, and starts over.

Another coworker, Beth, has lived with her boyfriend, Neil, for seven years. She wants to get married; he never will. She ends it. When her father has a heart attack and her family leaves her to do all the caring, Neil turns up and quietly does the dishes and the laundry. They reconcile, and later, he proposes.

Anna’s friend Mary meets men online and checks every message, every email, every page, and her dates go nowhere.

What It Gets Right

A good deal. It says plainly that confusion is itself an answer. It lets two women leave men who won’t give them what they need: one after seven years, one after an affair. It shows a woman starting over in her own apartment. And it lets a man show love by doing the dishes.

What It Teaches

1. Waiting by the phone

Gigi’s whole story is waiting: for a call after the date, for a sign, for a reason. She reads hope into silence, because the alternative hurts.

The Decoder’s Card D-2, Breadcrumbing, is “Minimal contact to keep you hooked without commitment.” The occasional message. The “we should hang out” that never becomes a plan. Many women have lived on crumbs like that, and been told, when they asked for more, that they were reading too much into it. The film’s title is the useful answer: if someone wants to see you, you’ll know.

2. Checking everything

Mary checks her email, her pager, her phone and her messages, constantly, for men who mostly never come through.

It’s played for a laugh. It’s also what breadcrumbing does to a person: it trains you to keep checking. The fix isn’t checking harder. It’s noticing who never makes you check.

3. “It was the workmen”

When Janine finds cigarette butts in the backyard, her husband blames the workmen. He’s been smoking, and lying about it, and he’s been having an affair.

The Decoder’s Card 16, The Gaslight Loop, starts small, with a lie about a cigarette that makes you doubt what you found. After he confesses the affair, Janine blames herself. Many women have done exactly that: taken responsibility for a betrayal that wasn’t theirs. When she finds the cigarettes again, she stops. The folded clothes and the note are one of the series’ quietest refusals.

4. Seven years

Beth wants to marry. Neil has told her, for seven years, that he never will. She finally believes him, and leaves.

It’s a refusal that respects both of them: she doesn’t try to change him, and she doesn’t stay hoping. The film then gives him a change of heart, which is lovely, and rarer in life than in films. What matters is that she left without needing it.

5. Where the film puts the work

Almost every lesson in this film is a lesson for the women: read the signs better, stop making excuses for him, notice when he’s just not that into you. It’s good advice. But notice that almost nobody tells the men to just say what they mean.

The clearest act of love in the film is Neil doing the dishes. It needed no decoding at all.

6. Starting over

Janine ends up in her own apartment, starting her life again. Beth leaves, and is chosen on her own terms. Gigi stops reading signs, and is surprised by a man who says it plainly.

The film’s quiet lesson is that the women who stopped waiting were the ones who got what they wanted.

Waiting, Side by Side

	Waiting to Exhale (1995)	Pretty in Pink (1986)	He’s Just Not That Into You (2009)
What they waited for	The right man	A call back	A call, a sign, a ring
What ended the waiting	Each other	“Just say it”	Believing what they were shown

Three films about women waiting on men. In each, the waiting ended when a woman stopped decoding and started believing what was in front of her.

If You Grew Up on This

Many of us watched this with friends, and recognized someone we were waiting on. Nothing on this page asks you to stop enjoying it. The useful thing is to look at it clearly from where you stand now.

Some questions to sit with:

Is there someone whose occasional message keeps you hoping?
How often do you check, and for whom?
Have you taken the blame for someone else’s betrayal?
Is there a “never” someone told you that you’re still hoping will change?
Who in your life needs no decoding at all?

The women in this film who stopped waiting were the ones who got what they wanted.

You’re the audience now. Confusion is an answer.