Blah and then some...

Rating: 5/10 (15 January 2010)

On the surface, an easy going film with an almost message, semi-memorable characters and a bit of believability. George Clooney's 'Ryan' goes around the country firing people for corporations that don't have the respect or humanity to do it themselves.
There is a love interest here and there is the moderately keen, Miss Keener ready to revolutionize the world of firing tagging along with charming Ryan. But where the film could have said something about human relationships, about humanity, about the real Zeitgeist of our incredibly cut throat Western world with its reliance on child labour designer clothing, Made in China products and our pathetic reliance on technology to improve our lives, it jumps into a banal story about the human heart and learning to let go of control. Once again, another film about a man afraid of the Commitment Monster...
Blah... trite and too basic to be tender, the director had a potential gold mine here but mined the blasé and the overused. A film with such an intriguing idea skips around the Truth and the Heart, giving us a leading man burnt by a woman and living on in a world far too much like his broken heart. Just blah.
And again... what a great idea for a film (based on the book) but everything you'd want to see in it, they leave out...(how lives are destroyed by the inhuman terminations...) go figure... No one is changed in this movie, no one is really touched and Miss Keener gets a great job at the end (leading me to believe she might get fired later by someone like Ryan had this been a good movie).