From Jason Reitman, director of Juno and Up in the Air, comes a film that explores how the Internet is changing the inner workings of American families. Men, Women, and Children, a film adapted from Chad Kultgen’s novel of the same name, features award-winning actors such as Adam Sandler and Jennifer Garner, along with up-and-comings like The Fault in Our Stars’ Ansel Elgort. The film follows a series of teenagers and their parents in a small Texas town who are all dealing with the effects of the recent boom in technology in different, sometimes extreme, ways. We meet a mother who monitors and even filters her daughter’s Internet and cellphone presence to the point of suffocation, a mother who is exploiting her young daughter online, in hopes of turning her into a star, as well as a married couple using online recourses such as AshleyMadison.com to cheat on each other. Alongside their parents, we see young teens using the Internet to trade their real lives for virtual ones, find encouragement for their eating disorders, and of course, develop damaging addictions to pornography. While the film may have good intentions, it comes across as preachy and extreme, while also being uncomfortably sexual and lacking an ending where any lessons are truly learned. Overall, Reitman’s latest film is a failed attempt to convey cautionary tales to the upcoming generation of young internet users.
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