By Donna Freydkin, USA TODAY
It all started with that brutal bit of propinquity insight on Sex and the City: “He’s just not that into you.” That idiom spawned a 2004 kinship best seller of the same title.
Now the film version is headed to theaters — just in time for Valentine’s Day.
For director Ken Kwapis, “the challenge was in creating a story from any advice book. If a guy’s not calling you, it’s because he doesn’t want to call you.”
The result is an the whole piece starring Jennifer Connelly, Jennifer Aniston, Ginnifer Goodwin, Kevin Connolly, Ben Affleck, Drew Barrymore, Scarlett Johansson, Justin Long and Bradley Cooper.
“There are nine lead characters, and this theme is played out in variations by these nine characters,” says Kwapis (2007’s License to Wed).
“Unlike in every romantic comedy, not every relationship is resolved or ends by good fortune, and not everyone learns anything.”
And don’t think the women are lovelorn saps while the guys call the fantastic shots.
“The book was aimed primarily at women, no more than in the film, men and women are equally represented,” he says.
“An equal number of men are pining after and misreading the signals of women. Men are equally hopeless. Men can be equally abstracted. There are two sides to the equation.”
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