Diet Bulworth and Manic Pixie Dream Girl Literally Outrun Fate with a Hat

Rating: 5/10 (21 May 2011)

We open as Matt Damon, a surefire candidate for senator, is familiarized to us via a pretty uninspired hodgepodge that includes the as-themselves cameos we now wait for in politically themed films, to provide what might misguidedly be referred to as realism. But he loses his lead and, rehearsing his concession speech in a hotel restroom, discovers Emily Blunt hiding from security. Instantly attracted to each other, of course, they kiss before being interrupted, of course. But, inspired by this stranger's generic advice, he makes a truly candid speech that revitalizes his ratings. But he ends up falling for that fleeting woman, becoming increasingly distracted from his career, despite mysterious men collaborating to keep them apart.
Yes, they're agents of fate itself, so the lovers must either literally outrun it, or accept a predetermined path, which, ironically, the story unashamedly does almost from the get-go. And in due course, a characteristically paranoid Philip K. Dick tale about the easily broken textile of reality is reassessed as a comforting parable about true love's fortune and the correctness of the divine plan. This reassessment aspires to induce the intense visceral emotion of a high-flying romance that exceeds time, space and the natural order of things, but George Nolfi's writing is short of the crisp, relevant impact such material needs, which it isn't anyway when you already have a brilliant Dick story there's no legitimate worldly reason to substitute! And yet, the film still uses Dick's name, basically as an advertisement. Nolfi takes Dick's idea and runs, letting go of pages along the way, until he's left with only a torn title page, and a strained adjoining of two reasonably agreeable, remarkably featureless individuals that rouses none of the profound, awe-inspiring excitement essential in a storyline so deep in philosophy and metaphysics. Their rebellious romance never even moves much past the convention of the contrived encounter of two potential lovebirds in serendipitously unusual circumstances, followed by the contrived interval of mopey separation. It's but one de rigueur element of a script that grapples for a consistent shape, even resorting to Magical Negro and Retro Chic clichés, to significantly be about more than beautiful people fleeing from badass-looking bureaucrat-style villains through an expressive cityscape.
After the initial disappointment in the film's resorting to manipulative schmaltz, its social implications are no surprise. Whenever Blunt and Damon are broken away, he takes for granted that, unless he can find her again, he'll never see her again. Sure, it's hard to find a woman in NYC when you know nothing more about her than her first name. It's a comparatively trouble-free achievement, however, to locate a superstar Senate nominee. But regardless of the movie's depiction of Blunt as an independent, progressive chick, she never takes any enterprise in any way to reconnect with the love of her life, nor does it ever dawn on anyone that she could. When Damon loses her number, she sulks for three years! When he's forced to forsake her in a hospital, she waits, brokenhearted, for 11 more months. This one-sidedness is made unmistakable when a divine courier praises Damon for his determination against all chances and then praises Blunt for, well, going along. This rare dud in the fight-the-system disposition of films portrays itself as a tribute to forging one's own future, provided, namely, that you happen to be a guy.
But the point is that Dick's musings on celestial formalities have a mischievous, sardonic tone, and Nolfi's gratuitous revamping is less effective. The trilby hats, which grant extraordinary powers when worn by the members of the Bureau, and later the hero, are particularly difficult to take seriously! They're incapable of crossing interdimensional doorways that convey them instantaneously across Manhattan unless they're wearing, yes, their hats. But to be fair, on the whole, the script forces gullibility not with its offbeat imagination but with its dull particulars: We can't buy that security is in dogged search of this clearly harmless uninvited guest, nor, to name another plot point, are we persuaded that Damon's career would be wrecked by media hype about him mooning his college friends. If you're going to botch Dick, at least be as consistent as Dick.
This movie is for those who want to have their fate both ways. The movie sustains the notion that an omnipotent "Chairman" has a plan for our existence, yet this plan is not so inflexible that it excludes freedom. And yet when we seem to bring that self-rule to bear, we find we're still sticking to a master plan, one so vast even the "adjusters" working at Earth level can't keep a handle on it. Deus ex machina performs such a key function in the way events resolve that it's challenging to leave feeling anything other than resentful, like a potential piece of brilliance has been unkindly run off with.