Trailer Watch: Spike Jonze's 'Her' for the 'Catfish,' 'Lars' crowd?

That's kind of the question at hand in "Her," the new film written and directed by Spike Jonze. The movie, a trailer for which hit the Web on Wednesday, stars Joaquin Phoenix as Theodore Twombly, a lonely writer trying to recover from a failed relationship. When an advanced operating system comes on the market that creates tailor-made virtual companions, Theodore signs up. It's then that he meets "Samantha," an engaging female voice program that comes to win his heart. 

The Oscar-nominated filmmaker's latest project feels particularly timely, given the rise of "Catfish," the MTV program about strangers who meet their longtime online paramours. The show follows teenagers who have spent years talking to individuals they barely know anything about, but still feel inexplicably close to due to online conversations.

"Her," out Nov. 20 in limited release, also seems to share similarities to "Lars and the Real Girl." In that 2007 picture, Ryan Gosling played a man who projects the perfect woman upon a blow-up doll and falls in love.

In "Her," "Samantha" is voiced by Scarlett Johansson, who replaced actress Samantha Morton after production wrapped. Though Morton was on set working with Phoenix, Jonze told Vulture that he realized during the editing process that "what the character/movie needed was different from what Samantha and I had created together."