This dime tour of NYC did not impress or entertain

Rating: Null/10 (23 August 2011)

This review will contain a few spoilers. Here's the first one: it's mediocre at best.
Philip K. Dick shorts could fuel Hollywood for years. They're nice, well thought out premises that aren't so complicated that they leave viewers confused – movies like Minority Report and Total Recall. However when you put a good short in the hands of someone like George Nolfi, the clown responsible for penning Timeline and Ocean's Twelve, you get The Adjustment Bureau.
The movie starts out as a quirky rom-com with lead man Matt Damon losing a Senatorial election and find comfort in the arms of a flirty girl hiding in the men's room. Such stuff as dreams are made on. He has a chance meeting with her again some time later, but the big twist occurs when he's confronted by the partners of Sterling Cooper Draper Pryce, told it's just not meant to be and angels will kneecap him if he spills the beans about their big operation. Years later, we get a replay of the situation and it all goes to heck in a knapsack when The Adjustment Bureau says it must not be.
There are a few big problems with how this movie handles the thriller aspects. First, you have to care about characters for any chase or conflict to even matter. We get a slew of sappy Notebook-esque lines with little character development. As far as I'm concerned, David Norris is a childish flake and Elise Sellas doesn't give two craps about anybody's feelings but her own. Not very likable, but I guess they do deserve each other. Second, a thriller won't be thrilling if there is no danger. The biggest dangers are Norris not being a great politician and Sellas not becoming famous in modern dance circles. No threat of bodily harm and the bad guys are completely befuddled when water is in the picture. I've ranted in the past about this Hollywood notion that unless you get the girl AND the money, fame, and good looks, it's not worth it. For most of us, finding true love would be enough – we wouldn't have to be President on top of all that. Last, all throughout the movie the plucky "buddy comedy" music doesn't give the a sense of impending doom. If Richard Widmark's brutal wheelchair down the stairs scene from Kiss of Death had been accompanied by bongos and a symbol hit at the end, I don't think it would carry the same weight.
Maybe we've seen too many Matrix-type movies to be impressed by mind- bending sci-fi chases, but this dime tour of NYC did not impress or entertain.