MEN WITH HATS!
Apr. 4th, 2011 11:39 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
defrogWhen you absolutely positively have nothing else to blog, there's always half-assed amateur movie reviews.
The Adjustment Bureau
The latest Philip K Dick story to get the Hollywood treatment: an aspiring politician meets the girl of his dreams, but Fate – in the form of a bureau of suits stage-managing humanity with mysterious powers – forces them apart to keep both of them on track with The Plan.
Contrary to the marketing hype, it’s nowhere near as imaginative or mind-bending as Inception, and it does sound iffy on paper. The story is pretty good, but it does take some serious suspension of disbelief – not the Adjustment Bureau per se, but some of their decisions. (For example, telling someone who has discovered the Adjustment Bureau’s existence and purpose to just get on his life and forget they exist. As if.) On the other hand, points for creating a fate agency prone to bureaucracy, mismanagement and screw-ups like any other agency.
Also, I had a problem with the hats. What secret agency would require its agents to wear hats that have been conspicuously out of style for at least 50 years? (On the other hand, they do look sharp.)
On the plus side, writer/director George Nolfi manages to pull the whole thing off pretty well, thanks primarily to believable chemistry between Matt Damon and Emily Blunt, and keeping the whiz-bang effects to a minimum. And it does raise some nice questions about the nature of free will, and eschews the usual third-act explosions for something a little more subtle.
Still, entertaining as it is, I wasn’t really blown away by it. It mostly works, but I wouldn’t call it a must-see film.
Keep yr head covered,
This is dF
The Adjustment Bureau
The latest Philip K Dick story to get the Hollywood treatment: an aspiring politician meets the girl of his dreams, but Fate – in the form of a bureau of suits stage-managing humanity with mysterious powers – forces them apart to keep both of them on track with The Plan.
Contrary to the marketing hype, it’s nowhere near as imaginative or mind-bending as Inception, and it does sound iffy on paper. The story is pretty good, but it does take some serious suspension of disbelief – not the Adjustment Bureau per se, but some of their decisions. (For example, telling someone who has discovered the Adjustment Bureau’s existence and purpose to just get on his life and forget they exist. As if.) On the other hand, points for creating a fate agency prone to bureaucracy, mismanagement and screw-ups like any other agency.
Also, I had a problem with the hats. What secret agency would require its agents to wear hats that have been conspicuously out of style for at least 50 years? (On the other hand, they do look sharp.)
On the plus side, writer/director George Nolfi manages to pull the whole thing off pretty well, thanks primarily to believable chemistry between Matt Damon and Emily Blunt, and keeping the whiz-bang effects to a minimum. And it does raise some nice questions about the nature of free will, and eschews the usual third-act explosions for something a little more subtle.
Still, entertaining as it is, I wasn’t really blown away by it. It mostly works, but I wouldn’t call it a must-see film.
Keep yr head covered,
This is dF
