The Circle – Film Review
The Circle is directed by James Ponsoldt and is adapted from the book of the same name, and stars Emma Watson as a girl named Mae Holland, who gets hired to work for an astoundingly large social media company. But as she continues to work in this social media giant, it may not be the greatest thing for her.
Let me say that I was actually quite excited to see this movie, not because I read the book because I did not read the book, but the reason why I was excited to see the film because of the fact that it stars Tom Hanks and Emma Watson. Well I was extremely disappointed for many reasons. This film BARELY even has Tom Hanks in it, which is very misleading considering the fact that literally every commercial, trailer, and everything, has Tom Hanks looking like he is one of the main characters. The truth is really that Tom Hanks is almost not even in this movie, and even the scenes that he is in, are actually quite boring.
And also, Tom Hanks is not that great at acting in this film. It sucks to say it but recently, Hanks has been not too great of an actor. Last year we had Inferno, and that movie was terrible, and by far the worst Tom Hanks performance I had ever seen.
Emma Watson as Mae Holland in The Circle (2017)
Emma Watson does do a fairly decent job in The Circle, however it’s just that her character is a bit cliche at times. And she honestly does feel like a movie character, instead of a real person. If you guys have watched lots of my movie
reviews before, you know that sometimes if I see a good movie, I praise that the main character felt like a real person on Earth, rather than just a character written in a screenplay, to be put into a film. That is of course due to excellent writing
and directing, however, Emma Watson’s character kinda just stays flat. And for the most part, she does feel like a movie character unfortunately. This is not Watson’s fault however, for it is the film’s directing and writing. A great example of a film character feeling real, and not feeling like a film character, is Tom Hank’s performance in the 1994 film, Forrest Gump. The entire time I viewed that film, I thought to myself “That’s Forrest Gump on the screen”, rather than “That’s Tom Hanks on the screen”.
Also, I gotta talk about the story. I gotta admit, there were some elements to it that actually interested me quite a bit. The unfortunate thing is, that sometimes when I got really invested in this story, the film undoes everything that was previously extremely interesting and either makes it really dumbed down for the audience, or they just kinda don’t do much about it. That is by far the worst element of the film, because in all seriousness the story can be a bit philosophical because the film constantly asks you the viewer in a way, what will social media be like in the future? Will we even have any privacy online, or will everything be public? Those aspects of The Circle I found very investing and I wanted to see if they could go anywhere with, but they really didn’t do much.
Tom Hanks as Eamon Bailey in The Circle (2017)
John Boyega is also in the film, and he is not the best character in the film, however I did find his character to be a little bit interesting, even known his character can also be quite cliche. If I were to pick a favorite character from this movie, I will have to go with Emma Watson’s character, because yes, even though she is a very typical and flat film character that the film doesn’t really go anywhere with, I still found myself the most attached to her character.
In-Summary: The Circle is a film with a bit of potential with a promising story that unfortunately goes nowhere and always falls flat right when it gets the viewer enthralled in it all.
Overall Grade: D+
MPAA Rating: PG-13 for a sexual situation, brief strong language and some thematic elements including drug use
Cast: Emma Watson, Tom Hanks, John Boyega, Ellar Coltrane, Karen Gillan
Directed by: James Ponsoldt
Distributed by: STX Entertainment
Running Time: 110 minutes