'Adjustment Bureau' Review: Good Ideas Explored, Still Misses the Mark

I just saw the new Matt Damon flick, The Adjustment Bureau, and wanted to like it. I really wanted to like it. But I didn’t.

Like many films, The Bureau is based on a fantastic ruse: Somewhere out there a group of men dressed in stylish black overcoats and fedoras called The Adjustment Bureau have a plan for how all of us humans will live our lives. Not ‘should’, mind you, but ‘will’. And they’re not talking about whether you drink Coke or Pepsi – they leave the small stuff to individuals so we have the perception of Free Will. The big stuff, though, the real significant choices – career, spouse, political affiliation (mostly Democratic, from what I could tell), is up to them. Every now and then they make an adjustment to our Plan to keep everything down on Planet Earth running smoothly. Unfortunately, about halfway through the film, the ruse gets in the way of the real story. And that’s too bad because the central message, the reason the director made the picture and we streetwalkers go to see it, is well worth talking about.

We may not talk about it much, but we think about it. We think about it a lot: The personal choices we make, especially the big ones, and the consequences that ensue, for better or worse. For example: Should I be a lawyer or a schoolteacher, single or married, pursue money or service, pleasure or sacrifice? And these are only a few, as anyone will tell you. These things matter, and in fact might even change the world. Perfect fodder for a thought- provoking movie.

George Nolfi, first time director and accomplished screenwriter and producer, no doubt wanted us to be neck deep in the “choice” dilemma and, for awhile, he almost pulled it off. We meet interesting characters that we immediately like, root for them to be together, and struggle along with them as the wise men of the Star Chamber do their best to keep them apart. We believe that Matt Damon could be a politician-on-the-rise, and Emily Blunt, especially Emily Blunt, could be a world-shaking modern dancer. Until the middle of Act II there is just the right mix of all these elements to make us “check our minds at the door” and follow them on their rough and tumble journey that finally ends with wedding vows. But Nolfi, faced with his own artistic dilemma, fouls it back to the screen. He includes so many scenes about The Ruse that it crowds out the message that the plot normally conveys.

To be sure, directors have used unlikely ruses for years. Financial magnate Nicholas Cage wakes up one morning to find himself a middle class tire salesman living in the suburbs with his wife and two kids in Family Man, and Mel Gibson can read women’s minds after suffering a near-electrocution while sampling their beauty products (no one said the ruse was painless) in What Women Want. While neither setup seems plausible to the average Joe, each director sprinkles it into the recipe gingerly, like salt and pepper, not turkey gravy over mashed potatoes. As a result, we walk to the car talking about the pros and cons of family life, not whether time travel is possible. And this is where Chef Nolfi gets side-tracked.

Here comes a bit of a spoiler, so plug your ears if you don’t want to hear unimportant details surrounding the plot. About halfway through the movie, men from the Bureau make choices that eventuate in one chase scene after another, each one becoming more complex. We also find out that these guys are servants of God, which is the only way most of their powers would be feasible, anyway. Are they angels? Maybe, but that’s a wholly different and distracting line of discourse. They open and go through doors to jump around from point to point in the universe, but can only turn the knob counterclockwise to get the most out of the trip. Really? This is how the Supreme Being equips his executive vice presidents? And smack in the middle of another needless chase, we find out that one of the Bureau men has flipped, giving tips to Matt on how to evade the men in black hats (oh yeah, they have to actually wear the hats to utilize the powers – see?). The whole thing gets thicker as you go.

To be fair, Nolfi eventually gets to the bottom of things and lets the audience have its way – sort of. The two lovers follow their hearts regardless of the consequences, God overrules his henchmen and changes The Plan, and Damon’s Deep Throat survives to direct heaven’s traffic once again. However, not only does the outcome seem like an afterthought because of all the noise created by the ruse, but Nolfi makes it all too good by half. Based on the final scene, the audience must infer that Damon and Blunt return to their pre-Adjustment lives. Done. Just like that. The wrap up is a little too Disney-esque for a movie with such a serious subject.

Unlike the decisions we make in real life, there’s nothing bittersweet about this one; no downside, no price to pay for opportunities lost. Whatever Hollywood would have us think, all of our choices have consequences, both good and bad. You don’t get to live life for free – even if God’s helping you out.