Virgin Atlantic Gala

Men, Women & Children

Jason Reitman explores the way the modern technologies both enhance and hinder our lives and relationships in this cross-generational comedy drama.


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  • Director Jason Reitman
  • Producers Jason Reitman, Helen Estabrook
  • Screenwriters Jason Reitman, Erin Cressida Wilson
  • With Adam Sandler, Ansel Elgort, Rosemarie DeWitt, Jennifer Garner, Judy Greer
  • USA 2014
  • 116 mins
  • UK distribution Paramount Pictures

Jason Reitman (Juno, Up in the Air, Labor Day) goes straight to the core of Chad Kultgen’s novel and mines from it a smart, funny and very poignant film about emotional isolation in the age of screen-based technology. Boasting a stellar ensemble cast – including Adam Sandler, Jennifer Garner, Rosemarie DeWitt and Judy Greer (amongst the adults); and young stars Ansel Elgort (The Fault in Our Stars), Timothée Chalamet (Interstellar), Kaitlyn Dever and Elena Kampouris (amongst the children) – the film finds a group of high school teenagers and their parents whose very ordinary lives are made complicated by the proliferation of digital platforms: social media, online games, illicit sites. Creating a visual form of overlapping dialogue with emails, instant messages, tweets and Facebook posts flashing onto the screen, Reitman uses the same, familiar technology that the film questions to reveal the darker impulses and feelings beneath the veneer of what we actually see. What does it feel like to discover your mum is getting remarried on Facebook? Or that your wife has secretly taken up internet dating? Cleverly interweaving its multiple storylines and capturing the different generational vernaculars, this wonderful film is topped off with a racy observational voiceover from Emma Thompson.

Clare Stewart