Whether it's Skyping with family halfway across the globe, tweeting at your favorite celebrity or texting friends to formulate your weekend plans, modern technology has done wonders to bring us all closer together. However, it also has the ability to drive us a part.
The trailer for Jason Reitman's new film "Men, Women & Children" debuted today, and it gives a very eerie depiction of how—you guessed it—men, women and children use technology today. With a tagline like, "Discover how little you know about the people you know," the movie shows how different our online lives can be from reality.
The teaser for "Men, Women & Children" has a very mysterious feel to it. It opens on a high school hallway with students shuffling along, heads down and hands glued to their smartphones. Sound familiar? The majority of what we learn about the film is told through the characters' texts, emails and other online activity. We see Adam Sandler's character, who is married to Rosemarie DeWitt's character, hire an escort through an online service. With messages like "I've forgotten what it's like to be desired," "U didn't tell anyone right?" and "just feeling so alone and empty," the trailer does a great job of piquing your interest into learning who exactly these characters are and why they feel this way. Plantains' cover of Donna Summer's "I Feel Love" is a perfect accompaniment to this trailer, which has a strong air of melancholy.
"Men, Women & Children" is based off of a novel of the same name by Chad Kultgen, which explores sexual pressures on junior high school students and their parents who try to make sense of it all using the vast resources of the Internet, from "World of Warcraft" to porn sites.
The cast of "Men, Women & Children," which looks like it will be an ensemble effort, also includes Jennifer Garner, Ansel Elgort, Dean Norris and J.K. Simmons. This intriguing trailer combined with some early buzz about the film suggests that "Men, Women & Children" will live up to the accolades Reitman received for some of his previous films, 2007's "Juno" and 2009's "Up in the Air." Or, perhaps the themes touched upon in "Men, Women & Children" may just be too real for us and the ever-connected world we live in today. Either way, seeing the full film is certainly going to be an interesting existential experience.
"Men, Women & Children" will open in limited release Oct. 3 and will expand its release Oct. 17.
