I was going to write an opening paragraph along the lines that many women I know have proclaimed that The Adjustment Bureau is good movie. I figured I would just allude to it and move right along but only after making an off-hand statement that women have different tastes than I and this did not seem the type of film (Matt Damon and his alleged “hunkiness” notwithstanding) that the female subsect of society would be interested in. But that would make me seem like a mid-twentieth century pig. And I would be completely wrong as you can possibly surmise from the categories listed above.

I don’t necessarily have a problem with “romance” movies. They just are not designed with my sensibilities in mind. I can still objectively review them from a critical standpoint to determine if they are completely bland and unsurprisingly (not unlike Love and Other Drugs) or a remarkably decent story merely concocted around a lovey-dovey tale like this film. Written and directed by George Nolfi, the film is based on a Philip K. Dick short story called Adjustment Team. I have not read the story (this comes as a surprise?) thus I am not sure if the wishy-washy sentimentality was present in the original, or just filled in by the filmmakers to avoid the wrath of thousands of moviegoers conditioned to accept the lowest common denominator in stories, especially those regarding the L word.

At its core, The Adjustment Bureau is a fine film. Matt Damon is quite charismatic as David Norris, the young hotshot would-be senator from New York. As he works out his concession speech in despair over the crushing defeat, David meets Elise (Blunt) who turns his frown upside-down with an encouraging talk and a passionate kiss. She soon is chased out of the hotel by security but David cannot shake her from his thoughts. After a “chance” reunion a few weeks later, David gets her number but quickly loses it as he discovers that a secretive team of … something not human, apparently has fumbled and David was not supposed to see her ever again.

David is sat down by the bland-looking gentlemen of the titular organization for a bit of exposition. The men act as real-life choreographers, putting people in certain places with certain events set to occur to shape their subjects’ path through life. David responds by declaring that he has free will. One of the inconspicuously dressed men informs him that he is free to his choice of toothpaste or beverage but the real heavy lifting is left up to this group. They tell him to never reveal their identity to anyone else for fear of a “reboot,” essentially erasing his memories and personality. Well, that’s actually a pretty good definition of a reboot.

Expectedly, there is a lot of talk about free will and destiny. David is determined to prove he can shape his own life even with a bureaucracy attempting to prevent that. These are the same guys in suits who declare that their period of intervention brought the Renaissance and the Enlightenment while mankind flying solo crafted the Dark Ages and WWI. Really, all it stands to illustrate is that David is madly in love with Elise and will stop at nothing to be with her. So, essentially it boils down to just about every other damn love story I’ve seen, except this time with sci-fi elements! Damon and Blunt are great in their roles and fortunately exert a lot of chemistry in their scenes together. There is a lot of heartache for both characters during the film and their interactions sell that quite well. The suits in the Bureau are not necessarily menacing, only in a “man following orders” sort of way.

Without going into spoiler-y specifics, the film closes with a not-quite “happily ever after” sort of ending, but it is pretty darn close. It feels very cheesy and directed at the romantic-seeking audience base that the movie caters to (not the marketing though as I recall). It’s all well and good but the end almost negates all of the drama and conflict from the preceding 100 minutes or so in a syrupy-sweet way that struck me as odd. For his directorial debut, Nolfi does an admirable job crafting sympathetic characters in a movie that normally I would be less inclined to watch. He touched on some deep meanings about life and humanity but wasted those on a story not worthy of such depth.

Note to filmmakers: If you want me to almost instantly hate your movie, go ahead and begin with the Spin Doctors‘ ubiquitous song Two Princes from over a decade ago. Yes, Love and Other Drugs is a “period piece” set in the late 1990s in the background as the direct-to-consumer pharmaceuitical business starts booming with the development of wonderdrugs to treat everything from depression to male … specific problems.

Jake Gyllenhaal stars as Jamie Randall, a smooth-talking salesman who is likely to talk his way into your pants while buying a stereo (well, not my pants but still). In an effort to prove his worth to his medical-oriented family, Jamie takes a job as a pharmaceutical sales rep for Pfizer. In his travels shadowing Dr. Stan Knight (Hank Azaria), Jamie meets Maggie Murdock (Anne Hathaway), a young woman who has been diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease. Maggie is your typical romantic comedy outcast with her art and proclivity for casual sex. However Jamie is further attracted to her after his initial rejection and their once apprehensive relationship blossoms into … do I really need to finish the rest of the recap?

Co-writer and director Edward Zwick has had some success in the past with award-winning Glory and Blood Diamond but there is nothing in L&OD (too lazy to type it all out, sorry) that you have not seen in another relationship movie, sans the Parkinson’s aspect. As such, it is not a bad movie but completely forgettable by the time you have finished watching. If someone made a MadLibs for romantic comedies, this movie with fit it with a T (the primary reason I don’t like these movies anyways). You have the jerky, self-involved guy who comes around to responsibility and love, the free-spirit who cannot commit to a relationship, the plucky character for comic relief, and a life-altering event that makes the previously jerky guy come chasing after his love and professes his desires in a cliched conversation just before the closing credits. Replace Maggie’s Parkinson’s with leprosy or a club foot and the outcome of the movie does not change.

Gyllenhaal and Hathway perform well with the stock characters that they are given and I must admit to liking the budding stages of their relationship as they have a playful banter between them. There are some laughs as well, mostly centering around the leads’ sexual behavior and Jamie’s new toy to sell: Viagra. Azaria is woefully underused however as his comedic chops are diluted to lusting after women and the “little blue pill” to compensate for his lack of drive professionally. Hands down the most annoying part of the movie (other than the sheer predictability of it all) was Josh Gad as Jamie’s brother who is apparently rich from developing medical software, yet sleeps on Jamie’s couch for some glossed-over reason. His character was the aforementioned plucky comic relief guy but as a cross between Jonah Hill and a really annoying asshole, Josh (the character, not the actor) added absolutely nothing to this movie already bereft of ideas. Although, I did want to punch him repeatedly in the gonads while he was on screen so I guess that was different than a typical movie.

Given the heaviness of the story around Maggie’s medical condition, one would expect that a movie centering around how a person lives in such shape would address the notion of how that affects the relationship in question. While the spouse of a Parkinson’s sufferer gives Jamie the idea that it is a life of misery and he is best to walk away, we never really see how her affliction impacts the relationship as she is still in the early stage of the disease. The characters follow all the standard trappings of such a movie and at the end, it is implied that he accepts her no matter what will come, thus robbing the story of any real weight that it might have had if we followed them down their long, strenuous journey ahead. In short, it’s a cop out of an ending but I would suppose that fits the movie just fine.