Based on Dave Eggers’ best-selling 2013 novel, The Circle is a movie full of potential with an impressive cast about pertinent issues surrounding technology, but ultimately fails its lofty expectations as a result of weak writing and narrative structure. Emma Watson plays an idealistic millennial who is given the opportunity of a lifetime to work at the Circle, the largest technology and social media corporation in the world serving billions of customers. She is excited to work with a supposedly innovative company and amazed by the sprawling campus that offers everything a young worker would want, an environment remarkably similar to the headquarters of Facebook and Google. With the encouragement of the Steve Jobs-like co-founder and CEO, played by Tom Hanks, Watson’s character allows her entire life to be recorded for the entire world to see as a part of the company’s experiment for full transparency. After the project causes friction with her family and friends over their lack of privacy, she realizes that everything at the company is not as it seems, and there may be dark secrets that harm its customers. The film becomes a cautionary tale and raises the vital implications of technology for convenience sake being detrimental to basic privacy and people’s mental and physical well-being. Unfortunately, it feels like there is something missing from the movie, especially the lackluster ending that does not resolve much of anything and distracts from the overall message. Overall, despite its particularly timely subject matter and star-studded cast, I found it to be nothing more than your average technological thriller that was slightly entertaining and simply passed the time.
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