The Circle

½★ - A Review by Cameron Kanachki

"It's the chaos of the web made elegant." That's a horrendous quote from Emma Watson in The Circle, the worst film of the year so far. The film is based on the 2013 novel The Circle by Dave Eggers. Watson plays Mae Holland, a young woman stuck in a dead-end job as a customer service rep. She lives with her mother, Bonnie (played by Glenne Headly), & her father, Vinnie (played by Bill Paxton), who suffers from multiple sclerosis. Also, her ex-boyfriend/friend, Mercer (played by Ellar Coltrane) wants to get back together with Mae. Through her friend, Annie Allerton (played by Karen Gillan), Mae gets a job at a tech company called The Circle, which is basically Apple, Google & Facebook put together. At The Circle, she meets the founders: Eamon Bailey (played by Tom Hanks); Tom Stenton (played by Patton Oswalt); & Ty Lafitte (played by John Boyega). Eventually, Mae ascends to the top of The Circle, but she finds something very sinister going on.

The cast is mediocre. James Ponsoldt's direction is terrible. And the screenplay by Ponsoldt & Dave Eggers is putrid. This film had a lot of ambition, the premise was interesting, & the cast & crew made this look great, with James Ponsoldt's last 2 films, 2013's The Spectacular Now & 2015's The End of the Tour, receiving critical acclaim & were some of my favorite films of those years; however, all of those 3 combined failed to make a film that could've been great, & instead made one of the worst films of the decade so far.