Spike Jonze’s Her Gets Two Parodies, Both Called Him
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Of all the films currently making rounds on the awards circuit, 12 Years a Slave seems the least likely to get a dumbed-down parody, given its subject matter. But a divorced white guy with a mustache falling in love with his operating system? You barely even have to think of any actual jokes to come up with a way to spoof that. Now we get to share two videos sending up Spike Jonze’s Her that both seem like they were written in the first five minutes after walking out of the theater.
Fortunately, the video above manages to draw a few grim smiles with its stereotypical version of what a guy would sound like as an operating system. He belches. If he had hands he’d probably scratch himself, you know, down there. Created by That’s What’s Up Comedy, this Him trailer stars Laura Eichorn as the somewhat antisocial lead who gets Bert as her personal OS. It seems like Bert is much more interested in remaining non-sentient and honest about his state of being rather than making his owner happy. He also likes to hang out with the guys and not draw attention to himself in public. He also might not like Mumford and Sons. Sounds like an okay guy to me.
Let’s go ahead and get this other clip out of the way before we do on.
This vid was put out by HitFix and Riot Productions, who usually have their fingers closer to humor’s pulse than that. This version’s stereotypical version of maleness involves Sam, the OS that is really nice and understanding to Theodora, at least until they finally “sleep together,” after which he becomes completely vacant to the point of disappearing altogether. And then Theodora goes slightly crazy trying to reconnect with him.
These are parodies in the same way that Superhero Movie and Epic Movie are parodies. They just do the exact same thing as the source material, only with less interesting dialogue. There’s nothing subversive, or even particularly clever going on in either installment. They’re just there to make fun of men that are douchebags and jackasses, that’s not exactly fresh territory. I guess that’s fun enough for some people, but I grew up watching better stuff. Still, a solid B+ all around for effort.
It’s not as if any amount of spoofing is going to knock the prestige off of Jonze’s film, which has already taken home awards for screenwriting, including the Golden Globe. The ultimate test comes in March, as Her is nominated for seven Oscars. Will it win anything, or will the Academy be as clichéd as the dudes in these videos and opt for something non-sci-fi? We shall see.
Here’s the real trailer, by the way, for the sake of comparison.
