The Adjustment Bureau

2/5 stars
(Caution, spoilers hide in tall grass.)
I like Matt Damon. He appears in good films and I like his acting style.
It’s such a shame he got involved in The Adjustment Bureau. If you’re looking for a stupid action film, this won’t quite fit the bill and it’s not Inception clever or Pirates of the Caribbean funny. It slips between all of these and the main genres as well. There’s romance and a sort of thriller tone as well as an action movie theme. Oh and there’s a sniff of fantasy or perhaps sci-fi. And this is the problem. It can’t decide what it wants to be so it becomes a jack of all trades.
The basic premise revolves around chance and the ‘Adjustment Bureau’ who tweak things to make sure the planet continues following ‘the plan’ which is devised by ‘the controller’. The employees of the bureau are sort of, sort of not angels, only they have no wings and wear hats.
The story follows David Norris who’s running for the senate. He loses and, right before his speech, he meets a girl. That is the last time he is meant to meet her. But when the Adjustment Bureau fail to tweak his day, he gets on a bus and meets her again. From there on in, chance pulls the two together as the Bureau struggle to pull them apart because it doesn’t adhere to the plan.
Let’s get the praise out of the way. The characters are very well portrayed and acted. Norris, who I continue to think is called Bourne, is very likeable, funny and easy to connect with. I particularly enjoy Damon’s fighting noises which went something like ‘mmrh erp the prph’. The girl played by Emily Blunt, is equally fun to watch. Harry Mitchell, one of the Adjustment agents, played by Anthony Mackie, has a good screen presence and was let down only slightly by the lack of good script.
Otherwise, the characters were okay but not sparkling.
Unfortunately that’s all the praise, if you can call it praise, I have for The Adjustment Bureau.
The aforementioned jack of all trades thing bugs me. It’s a mix of Borne and The Matrix, with a romantic comedy driving the plot. And it’s strange, like banana and coffee – not unpalatable but not something you’d try more than once.
Then there’s the product placement, one of America’s more annoying habits. One of Norris’s political buddies walks into the room and practically screams the line ‘Are you still watching CNN?’ My immersion disappeared completely and that annoyed me greatly. I’d like to say that good movies don’t need product placement but maybe they’re just craftier about it. Take The Matrix. Neo could be tattooed with thousands of tiny Coca Cola logos or maybe that orgasm cake is sponsored by Nestle. Who knows?
My last rant concerns the romance part of the story. Because right up until the end, I was just about running with it. The Adjustment Bureau was getting away with it. And then Norris and the girl got surrounded by armed guards and decided that their only tactic was to kiss passionately for a good fifteen seconds. Yup, that’ll save you. Annoyingly, the film then let them get away with it and the happy ending slid into view like a leery uncle, slapping a moral on for good measure. I think it went along the lines of ‘if you believe/trust in love, everything will work out’ but I’m not sure because I was too busy throwing up.
So, would I watch it again? Not if you taped me to a chair and threatened my cat.