The Circle - Review

 

In any kind of entertainment, be it video games, books, theatre, television or movies, there’s always a debate between showing versus telling. Generally, the agreement is that you should show instead of tell.

Don’t tell the audience about how sad a character is, let us see it in their tears and frown, not in their monotone monologues. The other films of director James Ponsoldt (“The Spectacular Now,” “The End of the Tour”) know this well. “The Circle” does not.

One of the biggest disappointments, if not the biggest, is how the film wastes its great cast. Emma Watson (“Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2,” “Beauty and the Beast (2017)”) is left to play a two-dimensional character, Mae, who has virtually no impact on the story. John Boyega (“Star Wars: The Force Awakens,” “Attack the Block”) is in a total of six minutes of the film, half of that standing in the shadows brooding.

Karen Gillan (“Doctor Who,” “Guardians of the Galaxy”) fares better as Mae’s friend Annie, but she too falls subject to the poorly written script. The minor characters; Mae’s friend Mercer, her parents, are just flat out forgettable. The only ones who escape the fate of being awful are Tom Hanks (“Forrest Gump,” “Saving Private Ryan”) and Patton Oswalt (“Ratatouille,” “The Goldbergs”) as the heads of The Circle. They both exude a wonderful sinister kind of cheeriness to them. The script seems to give them the best lines, best scenes, and most character development as well.

Pacing is all over the place, and at times the film feels like it’s made up of three different acts from three different films. The first act is an amusing, but unbearably slow paced, look at a Google-like social media company. The second act plays like a drama where we get to see how a terrible Big Brother like company was formed. The third act feels straight out of a poorly written sci-fi spy film. None of it gels together and the writing doesn’t help either.

However, not all is bad. The music is good, showing that Danny Elfman (“Batman (1989),” “Beetlejuice”) can get some great music out of synth instruments, and the aforementioned second act is surprisingly strong, for about 15 minutes.

Taking it down to a basic level, the biggest issue of the film is this; there is no connection with the characters because the film doesn’t understand showing versus telling. One scene has a character telling another how overworked and sad she was, but that she is now better.

The movie never shows us any scenes of her looking sad or overworked though, so this does little to engage the audience. Also, given that The Circle is a social media juggernaut, it’s disappointing that we are only shown two of their products; the two products that are important to the plot, and are only told about the dozens of other fascinating things they’ve created. Also, side note: that is not a real ending!

“The Circle” takes a great cast, great director, and great source material (the 2013 novel written by the film’s screenwriter Dave Eggers) and makes it into sloppy sci-fi thriller. With zero sense of pacing, an insultingly low quality script and forgettable characters, this “Circle” is pointless. 1/5

Sandy Wexler - Review

 

In the early 2000’s, Adam Sandler was king. After a stint on Saturday Night Live, he came out with a string of commercially successful, if critical divisive films that audiences flocked to. Now though, he’s had more hits than misses, and after his contract with Netflix gave him arguably his worst film ever (“The Ridiculous Six”), could, what appears to be, a more serious film give Sandler the push he needs to be a big name in comedy once again?

Sandy Wexler, played by Adam Sandler (“Happy Gilmore,” “Hotel Transylvania”), is a 90’s talent manager for anyone he can get his hands on in Hollywood. Puppeteers, musicians, comedians, Sandy will back anyone. Soon, he finds a singer in a theme park, Courtney Clark, played by Jennifer Hudson (“Dreamgirls,” “The Secret Life of Bees”), that he thinks could be the next big thing, and he uses his limited skills and contacts to try and make her a star.

Of the few things this movie does right, Sandy and Courtney are the biggest successes. Sandler seems like he’s actually trying for once. He doesn’t succeed all the time, but he manages to imbue Wexler with a good guy attitude that is genuinely charming.

It’s a break from the past shtick of playing rich jerk guys because, while Sandy may lie to his clients, you can see that he genuinely cares and is trying. Hudson provides her gorgeous voice, but also a smile and an upbeat attitude that helps to balance out the generally low quality of the jokes.

At two hours and eleven minutes, “Sandy Wexler” drags like a corpse. Easily forty minutes could have been shaved off the movie by cutting some of the worst jokes Sandler has ever attempted. For the most part the movie is semi-serious, peppering in some pop culture references and one or two sentence long jabs.

However, there are other jokes that take up whole scenes that not only feel unnecessary, but like they come from a completely different film. Some are, but not limited to, a clown’s suicide and playing puppet with an unconscious man’s body. Surprisingly, those two are not as closely related as you’d think.

The rest of the cast is rounded out by Sandler’s typical crew. Terry Crews (“Brooklyn Nine-Nine,” “Idiocracy”) and Kevin James (“Paul Blart Mall Cop,” “Barnyard”) show up and are pleasant. Not terribly funny, although Crews does get some good screen time as a bedtime themed wrestler.

Nick Swardson (“Reno 911!,” “30 Minutes or Less”) is also here, as useless as he’s ever been in a Sandler film, and Rob Schnieder (“The Hot Chick,” “Deuce Bigalow: Male Gigolo”) plays a…Iranian business man who spies on Sandy as he lives in his pool house while he’s away. Complete with brownface for his actual starring scenes as well.

“Sandy Wexler” sees Sandler and company trying for once. There’s a predictable, but earnest story about love and honesty framed around a likable Sandler character. Even his voice isn’t nearly as annoying as you’d think it would be. But a gargantuan runtime, loads of useless characters and jokes, a flip flopping tone, and downright awful scenes that serve no purpose than to tell a mean joke means that, while his best film since “Funny People,” “Sandy Wexler” is just as annoying Sandler as ever. 1.5/5