Review: The Circle

Emma Watson is Mae, who via friend Annie (Karen Gillan) gets an interview to work a big Google/Apple-like tech company of the film’s title. Passing the interview, she begins work in the Customer Experience section, where her goal is to achieve 100% customer satisfaction on the company’s surveys. She also gets to stay on campus, and the health benefits are a great plus given her father (an emaciated and dishevelled-looking Bill Paxton) has MS. The whole vibe at The Circle is also very positive. Almost to a passive-aggressive degree. Meanwhile Circle’s CEO Eamon Bailey (Tom Hanks) turns up from time to time to deliver encouraging speeches and product info. The latest technology set for launch is something called SeeChange, micro camera technology with streaming ability, something Bailey sees as becoming commonplace across the globe, making the entire world public and transparent. While a normal person would be going ‘What the absolute fuck? I’m outta here…’ Mae is all-in, and not only does she start delivering speeches of her own, she’s also agreed to have her entire existence filmed 24/7, which displeases her parents (including mother Glenne Headley) and her friend back home. John Boyega turns up as a semi-retired tech genius who is an occasional unofficial presence at The Circle, but who has serious doubts about the company’s supposedly altruistic motives. Patton Oswalt (in a role seemingly written for Oliver Platt) plays Bailey’s #2.

A rock-solid performance from Tom Hanks can’t save this clichéd and unconvincing 2017 techno-paranoia thriller from director James Ponsoldt (director of the overrated “The Spectacular Now”) and co-writer/author Dave Eggers (whose “A Hologram for the King” was turned into a not-bad film). Neither Emma Watson nor her American accent are believable from moment one here, and the film itself is no more credible. She’s even seen early on driving one of those quirky little shitbox cars that only exist in the movies. Ponsoldt and Eggers (co-adapting his own novel) don’t do anything remotely new or credible with the material here. It’s unconvincing and clichéd, and adding a slight sci-fi bent is no help, only serving to make the film sillier. As a TV series it might’ve had time to tell its story in a less heightened, less rushed manner. As is, it’s laughable.

What little credibility there is comes from a well-cast-against-type Tom Hanks (who was also in “A Hologram for the King”, by the way). Hanks and ‘villain’ are not usually seen as a palatable pairing, but playing basically a more outwardly genial- yet pretty rotten on the inside- version of Steve Jobs (Or more accurately, a Jobs-type) is actually a good fit for the charismatic and likeable actor. The character is disgustingly convincing at being benevolent and altruistic. He is so good at sucking you in, and Hanks is genuinely quietly terrifying. He’s good, the film isn’t, and Hanks isn’t in the film enough to come close to saving it.

Watson is entirely flat in a film that pretty much has to rest on her shoulders. John Boyega is probably the next best to Hanks, but the rest of the cast are either misfiring or misused. It’s sad to see the late Bill Paxton and Glenne Headly in pretty much their final roles as Watson’s parents. They’re fine, Paxton especially, but the roles are pitiful. Karen Gillan, meanwhile is actually really dreadful and over-the-top as Watson’s increasingly erratic friend and co-worker. She dials it up to 11 early and just keeps going. The film also contains a few truly dreadful performances by Smith Cho and Amir Talai as a couple of Watson’s uber-perky co-workers at The Circle. In a bit of major miscalculation, these two twits seem to have wandered in from either a comedy or a remake of “Invasion of the Body Snatchers”. In a film with very little credibility, they obliterate the whole damn thing. If the jarring, seemingly comedic tone of their scene isn’t bad enough, the film then sharply takes a sinister turn to a degree that really isn’t plausible. You’d run away from this crazy techno-cult after about the 30 minute mark, here. If somehow you’re still actually buying the bullshit on show here after about an hour, the film goes all-in on the stupidity with a particularly silly and overdone car accident scene. It’s absurd.

Either you’ll go with this nonsense or you’ll resist it. I very, very strongly resisted it (not being a privacy conspiracy nut probably played into my resistance), despite the efforts of Tom Hanks and John Boyega. Nothing convinced, none of it is original, the tone is wildly off, and the ending is rushed. Maybe this could’ve served as the basis for an interesting TV series, but as a film, it doesn’t even begin to work.

Rating: C-