Mae (Emma Watson) gets a chance to escape her dead-end job due to her friend, Annie (Karen Gillan), getting her an interview with The Circle, an Appple/Facebook/Google-type company. The Circle is extremely helpful in all aspects of life, but equally intrusive. The employees act like members of a cult, led by the charismatic Bailey (Tom Hanks). Over the course of the film, Mae switches back and forth between embracing absolute surveillance and thinking that it may be dangerous.
As edgy and deep as your auntās Facebook posts, The Circle makes the bold statement that a complete lack of privacy is probably a bad idea. Not exactly the deepest of philosophies.
Perhaps this could have been interesting if the characters, mainly Mae, acted consistently. If the film was an examination of a woman falling into a cult and becoming a true fanatic, then it would be something. If it was a thriller following a woman trying to take down a dangerous corporation, or stuck within a shadowy organization, then again, it could be interesting. But any of those requires Mae to be a character, and she isnāt one. She just slips from one personality to the next, depending on what is needed for what passes for the plot at any moment. Her decisions seem random, but no worse than those of anyone else. Would the CEO of a powerful information technology corporation really think it was a good idea to use their anti-privacy tech to locate someone that is angry and hates them in a live broadcast? If so Iām betting a PR rep would jump in. This company rarely makes moves that a real company would make. No one else does either. Mae has millions of online followers who constantly comment in real time, and there is not a single troll. That wouldnāt be a problem in a different kind of film, one that wasnāt pushing a message about online communication, but here it is odd.
But neither reality nor the company matter. The film rises and falls on Mae, which means it falls. I was never āwithā her. I never believed her or was interested in her. Apparently I wasnāt alone as reshoots were made in an attempt to make her human, but test screenings determined it had the opposite effect.
The old-foggy tone gets old really fast, and Iām the old-foggy they are aiming at. Iām onboard with shaking my cane at those damn kids on my lawn, or to be more precise, those damn kids looking at their phones but this pounds that in, as if I was getting knocked on the head with my own cane. The none-too-subtle metaphor has cites and tech and groups of people being bad while being alone anywhere in ānatureā is good. Why do these millennials want to party and keep in touch when they could be standing around in a field somewhere gazing off at nothing?
With no mystery to solve, no character to follow, and no grand ideas to dwell on, The Circle is dull, and thatās the greatest crime a movie can commit.