Tuesday, March 22, 2011

Genre for Dummies?

Mr O and I have been to see The Adjustment Bureau at the cinema. We read several reviews and were prepared for an 'unlikely' ending and plot holes you could drive a truck through. I wish film critics would familiarize themselves with standard genre plot conventions.

If the story contains fantastic elements, it is ok for the denouement to include fantasy elements, so long as they are consistent with the world of the story. If a film contains an Adjustment Bureau who have strange powers and report to a Chairman who orchestrates The Plan, then a plot resolution that feature those elements is not full of plot holes.

It's called Willing Suspension of Disbelief. Really, an adjustment bureau in 50s hats who open doors between is no more improbable in that world than Hobbits in Middle Earth, an alien in ET, or Rochester's mad first wife in the attic.

This was an enjoyable, stylish film raised above it's B plot line by restrained dialogue and some fine acting by Matt Damon and Emily Blunt.

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