The Circle is a 2017 drama/sci-fi film directed by James Ponsoldt and based on Dave Eggers’ 2013 novel of the same name. The film stars Emma Watson, Tom Hanks, John Boyega, Karen Gillan, Ellar Coltrane, Patton Oswalt, Glenne Headly, and Bill Paxton as it follows a young woman who lands a dream job at a powerful tech company called the Circle, only to uncover an agenda that will affect the lives of all of humanity.
Well, this film was a huge disappointment. When will I get a good movie to review, come on! So The Circle was originally this year’s theVade List contender, but that changed as my official rules allowed me to change it to Murder on the Orient Express.. thank god. But there were some high hopes for this film as it reminded me a lot of Ex Machina in a sense as this film featured a great cast, and a great premise. What could possibly go wrong? Well.. everything.
To start things off lets talk about the characters.. oh the characters. Although each actor played their character fairly well (for the most part), I did have an issue with Karen Gillan and Emma Watson’s characters. Gillan’s character is never given the proper character development to understand what the hell is going on with her, and Watson’s character is a mess from the start. Throughout the entire film Watson’s character progression is so polar at times that you never understand what her true intentions are. Is she for the company? Is she against it? You never really know! Sure there is one scene where her character has some slight progression, but for the most part it was extremely confusing and just bad acting if not bad writing. Hanks was mediocre as well as John Boyega, but the real stars of the show were Glenne Headly, and Bill Paxton. Not only could the audience relate to them, but they were the only characters with real progression throughout the entire film.
There are a lot of other issues throughout this film with its writing and world building, but the thing that bugged me the most was the complacency within the characters and more specifically the workers at the Circle. There’s a scene where Watson’s employees suggest she start interacting with company a lot more, and they seem so blatantly stupid that you wonder why she listens to them in the first place. Sure some of the technology in the world is pretty reminiscent of what we have today, but the implications of an ‘all seeing eye’ type of camera seem like more people would be against it than for it in today’s culture. We ultimately end up seeing the consequences of this piece of tech, yet nothing really happens due to the poor world building and lack of character development.
Although I didn’t mind the set design and cinematography, I have heard plenty of complaints about the film’s editing. Again, I had no issue (except the one kayak scene), but some people did have some negative things to say about it. Although I really wanted this film to succeed the movie really did fall flat on its face, mostly when it came to the finale of the film. Like I said above, you never really understand Watson’s character intentions, so come the finale the audience has no idea what to expect. Now this might sound like a good thing, but this film is told from Watson’s point of view, the reason why her intentions are unclear is because of her mediocre acting throughout the film. Not only did that ruin the ending for a lot of people including myself, but the fact that there is no real closure by the end of this film really left me screaming at the screen in the end. It’s like the film was tying to leave the ending open to interpretation, yet the movie is based on being able to share everything and yet we still know nothing by the time the credits start to roll.
So where do I even go with this? This film was an absolute mess and a complete let down of a movie. The acting by Emma Watson was.. confusing to say the least, and the repercussions of the fictional technology seemed unrealistic and just plain ridiculous. Sure Hanks, Boyega, Oswalt, Headly, and Paxton did a decent job acting, but that was all that really helped add any meat to this dead elephant of a film. The attention to detail in some scenes, and set design was something I found pretty enjoyable, but when you pay more attention to the world of the film more than the story of the film you know the writing behind this movie has failed.. and failed hard. In the end I decided to give The Circle a “Bad” on theVade Review Bar. I really wish this would have been a good movie. It had all the potential to be a stellar ‘out of the blue’ type of film, but it ultimately failed by the thing it was most afraid of.. “Unfulfilled potential.”
