THE CIRCLE 2 stars Emma Watson, Tom Hanks, John Boyega, Ellar Coltrane, Karen Gillan, Patton Oswalt; PG-13 (a sexual situation, brief strong language and some thematic elements including drug use); in general release
The Circle is a 16-year-old rookie driver trying to start his hand-me-down Honda in fourth gear. When you try to do too much too early, you always wind up stalled.
Director James Ponsoldts film, based on the book by Dave Eggers, tells the story of a nave young woman who gets tangled up in a powerful tech company bent on running our lives. The young woman is Mae (Emma Watson), a good-natured 20-something in search of a job. The company known as the Circle is an obvious stand-in for Facebook, Google, Apple or whatever contemporary corporation floats your Big Brother boat.
Thanks to a little intervention from her friend Annie (Karen Gillan), a Circle executive, Mae gets an entry-level position working in customer experience. For about half a second, it looks like a dream job: exciting corporate campus, enthusiastic co-workers and free company concerts from Beck.
The Circles mission is to make the chaotic world of the 21st century into something simple and manageable, and their solution is to rope everyone into an all-encompassing system that enables the company to control and observe every aspect of their personal lives. In a regular internal company meeting called dream Friday, CEO Bailey (Tom Hanks) the Steve Jobs/Mark Zuckerberg stand-in introduces a tiny, marble-sized video camera that can be hidden everywhere and tied into the Circles satellite network.
The privacy invasion doesnt stop there. One day at her desk, a pair of Stepford Wife zombie co-workers explain that Mae should spend as much of her personal time on campus as possible, and a visit to the on-campus doctor yields an internal tracking sensor and a communication wristband you can never take off. The company somehow knows about her multiple sclerosis-ridden father, Vinnie (the late Bill Paxton), and suggests that Mae put her parents on the company health care program to help them out.
Incentives like this that are supposed to justify Maes continued involvement with this clearly deranged, megalomaniacal company, but often Mae is just too enthusiastic to play along with the system her character should be fighting. Shes got potential allies a Luddite friend named Mercer (Ellar Coltrane) who lives off-the-grid, and a genius programmer named Ty (John Boyega) who spends all of his time lurking about in the background and emoting to the audience that the Circle is up to no good.
Nevertheless, Mae continues to not only consent to the Circle mission, but amplify it, volunteering to wear a camera 24/7 in a Truman Show-style transparency effort. Its often hard to tell whether Mae is supposed to be a Katniss Everdeen-style hero or a tragic Michael Corleone who will wind up running the whole show. Maes internal conflict should be an apt illustration for our modern tech predicament, but here it just feels confusing.
The Circle voices a valid concern even if that concern might have felt more original around the time Sandra Bullock was confronting The Net but Ponsoldts effort is so heavy-handed and obvious that it feels like a poor propaganda film. Theres never any question as to what is happening, and a story that would have been intriguing if unpacked gradually instead comes bursting ablaze into the theater waving red flags, while pretending to be coy.
Eggers co-wrote the screenplay with Ponsoldt, so somewhere along the way, one or both of them missed out on the value of subtlety. At times The Circles plot feels like a social satire, or an allegory, but its tone never matches the content. The scene where Mae is introduced to the companys PartiRank (participation rank) program feels like a Funny or Die sketch, and somehow Mae is the only person on campus who seems to notice that her overworked drug-addict friend Annie literally looks like a vampire lurking in the back of her staff meetings.
The tough thing about The Circle is that its legitimate message should be relatable. Unfortunately, you can always leave a good idea stalled in the driveway.
The Circle is rated PG-13 for a sexual situation, brief strong language and some thematic elements, including drug use; running time: 110 minutes.
The Circle is a 16-year-old rookie driver trying to start his hand-me-down Honda in fourth gear. When you try to do too much too early, you always wind up stalled.
Director James Ponsoldts film, based on the book by Dave Eggers, tells the story of a nave young woman who gets tangled up in a powerful tech company bent on running our lives. The young woman is Mae (Emma Watson), a good-natured 20-something in search of a job. The company known as the Circle is an obvious stand-in for Facebook, Google, Apple or whatever contemporary corporation floats your Big Brother boat.
Thanks to a little intervention from her friend Annie (Karen Gillan), a Circle executive, Mae gets an entry-level position working in customer experience. For about half a second, it looks like a dream job: exciting corporate campus, enthusiastic co-workers and free company concerts from Beck.
The Circles mission is to make the chaotic world of the 21st century into something simple and manageable, and their solution is to rope everyone into an all-encompassing system that enables the company to control and observe every aspect of their personal lives. In a regular internal company meeting called dream Friday, CEO Bailey (Tom Hanks) the Steve Jobs/Mark Zuckerberg stand-in introduces a tiny, marble-sized video camera that can be hidden everywhere and tied into the Circles satellite network.
The privacy invasion doesnt stop there. One day at her desk, a pair of Stepford Wife zombie co-workers explain that Mae should spend as much of her personal time on campus as possible, and a visit to the on-campus doctor yields an internal tracking sensor and a communication wristband you can never take off. The company somehow knows about her multiple sclerosis-ridden father, Vinnie (the late Bill Paxton), and suggests that Mae put her parents on the company health care program to help them out.
Incentives like this that are supposed to justify Maes continued involvement with this clearly deranged, megalomaniacal company, but often Mae is just too enthusiastic to play along with the system her character should be fighting. Shes got potential allies a Luddite friend named Mercer (Ellar Coltrane) who lives off-the-grid, and a genius programmer named Ty (John Boyega) who spends all of his time lurking about in the background and emoting to the audience that the Circle is up to no good.
Nevertheless, Mae continues to not only consent to the Circle mission, but amplify it, volunteering to wear a camera 24/7 in a Truman Show-style transparency effort. Its often hard to tell whether Mae is supposed to be a Katniss Everdeen-style hero or a tragic Michael Corleone who will wind up running the whole show. Maes internal conflict should be an apt illustration for our modern tech predicament, but here it just feels confusing.
The Circle voices a valid concern even if that concern might have felt more original around the time Sandra Bullock was confronting The Net but Ponsoldts effort is so heavy-handed and obvious that it feels like a poor propaganda film. Theres never any question as to what is happening, and a story that would have been intriguing if unpacked gradually instead comes bursting ablaze into the theater waving red flags, while pretending to be coy.
Eggers co-wrote the screenplay with Ponsoldt, so somewhere along the way, one or both of them missed out on the value of subtlety. At times The Circles plot feels like a social satire, or an allegory, but its tone never matches the content. The scene where Mae is introduced to the companys PartiRank (participation rank) program feels like a Funny or Die sketch, and somehow Mae is the only person on campus who seems to notice that her overworked drug-addict friend Annie literally looks like a vampire lurking in the back of her staff meetings.
The tough thing about The Circle is that its legitimate message should be relatable. Unfortunately, you can always leave a good idea stalled in the driveway.
The Circle is rated PG-13 for a sexual situation, brief strong language and some thematic elements, including drug use; running time: 110 minutes.
