The Circle - F

Quick Hit: Terrible and boring, focusing on some of the most pointless of all conversations.

Let’s come out and say this right now – this movie was bad. If the “F” grade didn’t clue you in to the fact that this isn’t a good movie, hopefully you can exit the review now if you don’t really care to hear about why it was bad.

Ok, fair warning aside, let’s talk about The Circle. By my count, there was only one good scene in the movie, and it happened to feature the strongest actor, Tom Hanks. When Hanks goes onto the stage for the first time in order to essentially brainwash his workers into thinking that the new product of The Circle (let’s be real – it’s Google) is the best thing since sliced bread. It’s around this time we realize that this has the potential to be a good movie, if not a great one, and that’s despite a terrible introduction to our main character Mae (Emma Watson).

However, after this scene, the film dives so hard back into mediocrity, if there was a wall you would hit your face on it just to escape it. That’s because there are so many open plot threads that mean nothing that have been forced into the movie, only to be hastily resolved within a few minutes. Mercer (Mae’s friend, with which she has had “many adventures”) is just there to be a moral compass for Mae, and he fails extra hard. The scene that is supposed to be their greatest conflict is just them arguing and flailing in front of a bunch of other people. What’s missing? Tension and an audience that cares.

Watson is especially bad here, following up a wooden performance in The Beauty and The Beast reboot with a stony one here. She starts the movie as essentially a paper cut out, and finishes the movie as a declamatory, evil, learned-nothing-but-pretends-to-have-learned-everything woman. I can only assume it was the writing and the direction by James Ponsoldt, who also got a writing credit that has caused her to delve so far into the realm of nothingness. John Boyega, who is essentially just there to preach doom and gloom, pops in and out of the film on the whim of the writers. Hanks, who as I stated, owns the only good scene, even allows for himself to be pulled into the madness.

Oh and Patton Oswalt is in this as well.

Overall, despite some solid ideas on what a thriller could be, The Circle fails to deliver on a single one of them. Yes, dear readers, that means another “F”.

For more on this movie check out IMDB.