Couch Guy Reviews: The Circle
The Circle is a type of small movie that most people would not normally see. The same would have gone for me but the trailers for this movie, along with the cast, really had me interested. I’ve grown to appreciate these smaller movies to go along with the massive blockbusters. It creates a nice balance in movie going experience and The Circle fits that bill. That being said, this movie sucks.
The Circle stars my crush Emma Watson, Tom Hanks, John Boyega, and Karen Gillan. The premise of the movie is about May (Watson) who gets hired at a major tech company called The Circle. There, founder Eamon Bailey (Hanks) runs the company and pushes his employees to the limits in terms of privacy, surveillance, and freedom. So like my title says, the concept of this movie is fascinating. The Circle is basically Google on crack as it connects you to everything at any time in the world. Eamon Bailey believes that knowing everything is better for humanity and it’s up to May to uncover the dark secrets that lie beneath The Circle. But while this concept is great, it lacks in execution.
Getting to what I liked, I thought everyone gave a good performance in the movie. Hanks and Gillan were the main standouts to me. Hanks plays the Steve Jobs type and he so charming in the role. You what he doing is extreme but Hanks portrays the character in a way that is so smart and charismatic that you almost want to side with him. Other than that, I didn’t like everything else. Watson and Boyega are both fine in their roles but I didn’t like their characters. It wasn’t their fault though as I blame this more on the writing of this movie. Boyega is only in 3 senses in the entire movie and he should have been in the movie a lot more, considering how important of a person he is to The Circle.
As for Watson, she is the star of the movie and it’s clearly May’s story. While Watson brought a lot to the role, May is not a likeable character. I feel the only reason I cared about May was because she was portrayed by Watson. But once I thought about it, I realized I didn’t like her at all. Not to mention that the end of this movie is really, really stupid. Without getting into spoilers, the movie has been pushing this idea on you for the entire movie, then gives you something completely different in the final 5 and boy did I hate it.
In conclusion, The Circle is the worst movie I have seen this year and it was a major disappointment. Other than Tom Hank’s and Karen Gillan’s performances, there was nothing I really liked. But to end on a positive note, it was nice to see the late Bill Paxton as it will be his final movie ever. He had small role, but he nailed it as usual.
Rating: D-/62%
Written By: Steven Santoro (SVS_1993)
