Adjust This

It’s been close to a year since I flexed my over critical writing muscles. As I embark on a huge project I felt it was time to re examine a past time I hate so much; movie reviews. At least it’s a little more productive form of procrastination than sleeping.

Let us get to it...

Studios are going to do whatever they can to get you into the theatre. Tests show* movie goers want to be able to predict what the movie they are considering seeing is going to be about with the ending often being the most satisfying prediction. I want to know as little as possible going in to a movie. What fun is seeing a movie for the first time if you know the beginning, middle, and end in advance**? I’d seen the trailer for The Adjustment Bureau and even though this looked like an Inception rip off, I genuinely like Matt Damon so decided to give it a go. 

My knowledge of the existence of movies other than The Adjustment Bureau may have affected my perception of The Adjustment Bureau.

Great, so now I'm the bad guy.

 I guess there might be two fields of thought.
1) Screw what you THINK the movie is about, check that at the door and watch the movie that was made.
2) If the trailer shows me an Inception-esque Sci-Fi/Psycological Thriller, that’s what I better get.

While I tend to agree with the first "field of thought" on most projects, I have to say the second one crept its way into my brain about halfway through this film, coincidently, just about the time I started to realize that this wasn't the movie I thought it would be. The Adjustment Bureau would fit nicely into the category of “Romantic Sci-Fi/Thriller”, however, I can’t say I was actually thrilled at any point in time and the "Sci-Fi" was a little more "Fantasy" than anything. So what gives?

Matt Damon and Emily Blunt have good chemistry, they both made me smile and think, “oh, how cute”, in the same way a Romantic comedy might have done, and thats really what this movie wanted to be. The story barley scratches the surface of any of the questions that it purposes that would thrust it into a Sci-Fi/Thriller genre, choosing the easy way out of most of its predicaments, and relies solely on the fact that you think the lead characters are cute and you'd like to see them end up together. Which sounds a little like a.... say it with me....Romantic Comedy.

I know what you must be asking yourself and no, in the end I didn’t care what kind of movie I saw, I just wanted to see a good movie, and this movie was...good enough. Did it meet my expectations? No, but I’m not so self centered to say that I didn’t like a movie because it didn’t meet my expectations.

Wait, yes I am. We all are. That's how most people are going to judge movies. The fun part is when a movie zigs where you think it will zag. This movie just kind of spun its wheels.

In the end I don't really think the movie met the filmmakers expectations either. They made a movie for "everyone" which fell short of reaching anyone. I feel duped again. I guess I get a tid-bit frustrated when a movie studio gets its audience into the theatre based on their understanding of how we will view the trailer, then doesn't have faith in its audiences movie I.Q. to dig deeper into the characters or the plot and delivers a film that isn't quite what it promised.

You say it's not the studios fault that I expected something that wasn't there? I guess I'll just blame myself for watching the trailer and seeing too many movies.

I see a film like this I can only imagine what a parent must feel like when their child, totally capable of contributing something new and interesting or great and meaningful to the world opts to contribute something arbitrary and meaningless to the world…like movie reviews.

And I've just gone cross-eyed.

*I may be making this up.

** Okay, so most of us know all those things regardless.