The Adjustment Bureau (2011)

I don't know if this ever happens to you but do you ever watched something but not understand why you don't like it? The Adjustment Bureau was just one of those situations. Matt Damon and Emily Blunt are good and they have great chemistry; I didn't doubt that they were in love for a second.  It has a great cast including Terrence Stamp and John Slattery. So it's not that. It looks pretty good too. George Nolfi, a screenwriter by trade aquits himself pretty well in a debut which is not afraid to move around very quickly in its New York setting, looks like a perfectly well-made.  No problem there.
And this is a good strong story adapted by Nolfi, which I'd imagine he had to redraft so many times until it made simple sense and here it's tight enough to bounce a penny on. I mean,  I'm sure that the original Philip K. Rick story made sense also but could understand how you fall into a trap of focusing on Dick's minutiae and detail. What I'm trying to say is that Nolfi takes a complex story and streamlined it down to all you need to know about the sci-fi dynamics. That gives him the opportunity to focus on the love story at the heart of the matter. And it's a great concept for sci-fi, this story of love and and fate;where if there's no free will and everything is planned, how do you explain attraction and curiousity?
This is the point where I try to spit it out like a child who's tasted something bitter, making an 'idontlikeit' face, scraping my tongue with my teeth. Okay I went a bit far there but i'm still not sure why I didn't like it. It kinda just left me cold.
It's not soooo predictable but nothing happens in this film that you don't expect. There some mild peril, they come together, they're separated, they come together again, they're separated again, yadda, yadda, yadda. This is terrible issue to take but... maybe it's too well made. Actually there's a bit that covers this on the film where the political candidate, played by Damon, reveals his image is so micro-managed for his electoral bid, that even if shoes were scuffed enough that he didn't look like a banker to the lower classes and not too scuffed that he looked lower class to bankers; only difference is that this film isn't scuffed enough. It's strange to watch sci-fi and not have questions about the scientific dynamics but feel like, 'yep, i perfectly understand the rules of the macguffin at play here.  I have no questions.'
I hope you've gathered in bear the people involved in this film no ill will. Everybody does a good job basically. But I remember just being bored by it once I understood what the science stuff was and realised it was going to play out as perfectly as if the Adjustment Bureau had planned it themselves...

I watched The Adjustment Bureau (2011)  at the cinema.
My 2011 in Movies will return with Police, Adjective (2010)