Jason Reitman’s career has taken a strange turn of late. The director first gained acclaim for Thank You for Smoking and Juno, movies that dealt with serious issues while maintaining a comedic tone. But his last two films—the polarizing Young Adult and mostly panned Labor Day—embraced a darker approach, with the latter even veering into melodrama. Men, Women & Children, Reitman’s latest film, is a continuation of that trend: from the trailer, it looks like a sober, sprawling dive into how technology affects the lives of adults and kids alike.
The plot follows an array of stars—Adam Sandler, Jennifer Garner, Ansel Elgort—as they assuage or aggravate their sexual frustrations online. This certainly isn’t the first movie about the Internet and its various pitfalls, but if there’s one thing to be excited about, it’s Sandler: since Punch-Drunk Love it’s been clear that the actor’s real strength is not his slapstick comedy but the complex, brooding darkness that he can tease out of characters. That trait should be useful here. Men, Women & Children is out later this year.
