Intelligent psychodrama -- perhaps unintentionally!

Rating: 6/10 (26 June 2011)

There is plenty of evidence supporting the claim that this movie is a misfire: a feeble attempt to be science fiction and a love story at the same time, and failing on both fronts. But I think that from a different perspective, it is actually a smart and thought-provoking little film -- although Nolfi might not have intended it that way!
In spite of its good acting and engaging chemistry between Damon and Blunt, I did not enjoy watching this film. It made me angry, because I kept thinking that the Adjustment Bureau, as an entity, was far more important and pressing than being obsessed with a girl that one has met in the bathroom and has spent a grand total of 7 minutes with -- no matter how beautiful or charismatic she may be. When faced with the awe and grandeur of a superhuman presence who has steered the course of human civilization, all other mundane concerns shrink into insignificance. The fact that David Norris didn't get this simple concept showed me just how contrived and dishonest this movie was. I was ready to walk out in the middle of it.
What kept me watching it though was the possibility that this was precisely Nolfi's point. Here is a young man destined to assume a position of great leadership, and yet his life is marked by an endless stream of poor judgments and bone-headed decisions. From the fraternity prank, to kissing a strange girl he just met in the bathroom after losing a big election, to his senseless obsession with her, to his lack of curiosity about the greater notion of an Adjustment Bureaus, to hitting an elderly gentleman in the hospital waiting room ... This guy simply was not playing with a full deck. He was unbalanced, irrational, compulsive, and generally not very bright, and apparently not at all curious. Who wants to have someone like that in the White House anyway?! At the end, he gets the girl, and we get to breathe a collective sigh of relief that his life has been shifted away from the Presidency, and the danger has been averted!
I am giving George Nolfi a lot of credit here with this interpretation. I hope I'm right. If not, the guy is just an awful writer.