I'm just going to come right out and say it: for a movie star, Matt Damon has made a lot of crap. The Adjustment Bureau isn't the worst of his career, but it's not great either.
I didn't read the original short story from Philip K Dick, but from writer-director George Nolfi, The Adjustment Bureau is a parable about how we basically kill each others' dreams when we fall in love and settle down.
If Damon's character David Norris falls in love with Blunt's Elise, he'll never become president and she'll never make a world-class dancer. I suppose there are other ways you can interpret this dilemma, but the idea that its a parable for what we sacrifice when potential love and romance inevitably becomes banal in its quotidian reality, to me, is the most interesting thing about the film.
It could also be said (and, in fact, one of the angelic characters says it) that by being with the one you love, your ambitions dry up. Why aspire to greatness when you have the woman or man of your dreams?
Other heady concepts appear in the film, but they're ultimately undeveloped. Characters run roughshod over the age-old debate of free will versus determinism. And the idea that there's a "substrate" universe the angelic G-men can access through certain doors while wearing fedora hats... well, it's cute more than anything.
Can we talk about Emily Blunt for a minute? Man she is just a stone cold fox in this movie. The first scene between her and David in the bathroom, and he's just stunned by her appeal, and her genial nature and wit -- and the fact that she seems into him -- that's the best part of the movie. And one of the most believable, given how flabbergasted he seems that this gorgeous woman, approachable and bright and sincere and funny, could seem to be attracted to him, a kind of pug-nosed frat dude in a suit.
And then they kiss, and it feels believable even though it's sudden -- after all, she was just at a wedding and probably had a few drinks.
After that it's all hijinks and plot holes, but not so terrible you want to stop watching. Oh, last thing -- the politics. What innocent times back in 2011, huh? Imagine the vitriol today about a movie that has a celestial "bureau" pulling the strings to get a senator into the oval office. I mean, my God. While the film doesn't outright call him a Democrat, there's some stuff about solar panels, and his favorite color is blue... wink wink, he's a New York Democrat, a working class kid from Brooklyn.
Anyway, a good way to spend a couple of hours if you've got nothing else going. See you down the road.
I didn't read the original short story from Philip K Dick, but from writer-director George Nolfi, The Adjustment Bureau is a parable about how we basically kill each others' dreams when we fall in love and settle down.
If Damon's character David Norris falls in love with Blunt's Elise, he'll never become president and she'll never make a world-class dancer. I suppose there are other ways you can interpret this dilemma, but the idea that its a parable for what we sacrifice when potential love and romance inevitably becomes banal in its quotidian reality, to me, is the most interesting thing about the film.
It could also be said (and, in fact, one of the angelic characters says it) that by being with the one you love, your ambitions dry up. Why aspire to greatness when you have the woman or man of your dreams?
Other heady concepts appear in the film, but they're ultimately undeveloped. Characters run roughshod over the age-old debate of free will versus determinism. And the idea that there's a "substrate" universe the angelic G-men can access through certain doors while wearing fedora hats... well, it's cute more than anything.
Can we talk about Emily Blunt for a minute? Man she is just a stone cold fox in this movie. The first scene between her and David in the bathroom, and he's just stunned by her appeal, and her genial nature and wit -- and the fact that she seems into him -- that's the best part of the movie. And one of the most believable, given how flabbergasted he seems that this gorgeous woman, approachable and bright and sincere and funny, could seem to be attracted to him, a kind of pug-nosed frat dude in a suit.
And then they kiss, and it feels believable even though it's sudden -- after all, she was just at a wedding and probably had a few drinks.
After that it's all hijinks and plot holes, but not so terrible you want to stop watching. Oh, last thing -- the politics. What innocent times back in 2011, huh? Imagine the vitriol today about a movie that has a celestial "bureau" pulling the strings to get a senator into the oval office. I mean, my God. While the film doesn't outright call him a Democrat, there's some stuff about solar panels, and his favorite color is blue... wink wink, he's a New York Democrat, a working class kid from Brooklyn.
Anyway, a good way to spend a couple of hours if you've got nothing else going. See you down the road.