Title: The Circle
MPAA Rating: PG-13
Director: James Ponsoldt
Starring: Emma Watson, John Boyega, Tom Hanks
Runtime: 1 hr 51 min
What It Is: The Circle is a mystery/ drama movie about a young woman who seizes the opportunity to get a job at one of the worlds best and most powerful technology and social media company. Mae (Watson) joins a brand new experiment that pushes the boundaries of her privacy, freedom, and ethics. each decision she makes starts to impact her friends, family, and humanity.

What We Think: This film could’ve been great. It had lots of things going for it but didn’t use the material in a good way. This movie isn’t all that bad and does have just a couple positives. To start off the plot is intriguing but eventually goes nowhere, Emma Watson, Tom Hanks and John Boyega all do a good job with their roles and what they are given. That’s where the positives end. Everything else is just a complete mess that it’s hard to think it got by production. For a 100 minute movie, this movie felt quite slow. Granted the first 10 minutes went by fast but right after that it just got slower and slower. There were only 2 characters that served any real purpose in this movie. Those 2 characters are Mea (Watson) and Eamon (Hanks). Mea’s importance is there because she’s the main protagonist and what she does will change how the movie goes but other than that she’s just a lifeless shell walking around.

Tom Hanks is just about the only enjoyable thing about this movie. His character is fun, fast talking and all around a good time to see on screen and was one of the only things keeping me from turning this movie off. John Boyega’s character was a complete waste. I’m guessing he was supposed to be Mea’s (Watson) love interest but every time they were on screen it just felt awkward and cheesy.

I thought his character would do more but all he really did was just stand around. Now to the ending. This ending had to be one of the most abrupt endings I have ever seen. The movie had so much built up and a critical event happened before it and it just leads to nowhere. In the end, this movie had a lot going for it, a good cast, interesting premise, book-movie, etc but didn’t live up to it and fell flat on its face.

Our Grade: D, It failed to live up to its name and honestly was a mess. The characters had little development, some served no purpose and it has one the worst movie endings of the year. I would stay far away from this if you want to see a movie that will make you think or a good movie in general.