By: Ashton Newton
Entertainment Editor

“The Circle,” directed by James Ponsoldt, is a thriller about a tech company that is connecting everybody online and the implications that complete social transparency has on people, based off of a 2013 novel by David Eggers. It’s an obvious response to things like the cloud and Facebook, but due to poor performances and odd pacing, it really packs no punch.

Emma Watson’s character, Mae Holland, starts out as a customer service representative for The Circle, a tech giant with goals to place cameras all over the world for complete online transparency.

Mae Holland is the worst protagonist that I’ve seen in a recent film. Watson’s performance was passionless and amateur-feeling and the character choices were so sporadic that it was hard to pinpoint what the character’s actual values were. Her trials, her achievements, her personal life: they all felt meaningless. Watson’s poor American accent and atrocious fake cries helped to make Holland not only unlikeable, but distracting to the movie itself.

That said, there are some side characters that keep the movie from being absolutely horrible. Tom Hanks and Patton Oswalt play the two in charge of The Circle. Both men believe what they’re doing with The Circle, having everyone’s information, is right, but are taking immoral steps to make it happen. Hanks gives a likeable but untrustworthy performance, causing me to like him, hate him, like him, hate him and like him again.

Karen Gillan plays Mae Holland’s friend and fellow employee at The Circle. Her performance throughout the movie is by far the best. She shows a side of working for a tech giant that isn’t all yoga breaks and exercise ball office chairs and acts as the film’s sole voice of reason.
Cultural relevance is what “The Circle” is really banking on; working at The Circle is much like what is shown of working at companies like Google and Facebook. There’s an emphasis on fun, but all the while The Circle is collecting every bit of information that anyone has.

The problem with this is that the protagonist weaves in and out of supporting and disliking The Circle, so much so that I was lost on who I was supposed to care about that I stopped caring altogether.

“The Circle” is an intense movie with a great concept. While watching, I was constantly wondering where the film would go next, and it did go down some unexpected and interesting roads, but without anyone or anything to root for, the film fell short of what it was trying to be.

“The Circle” stands tall and tries to speak loud, but no words come out.

¼
– Awful performance from Emma Watson
– Poor attempts at cultural relevance

Contact the author at journalentertainment@wou.edu