Boy Meets Girl. And Angels Conspire.

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Boy Meets Girl. And Angels Conspire.
February 25, 2011
by Brooks Barnes
The New York Times

LET’S get this straight. You want us, a bunch of risk-averse studio executives who love nothing more than a sequel, to bet on a movie that starts out as a political drama, turns into a five-alarm romance and is suffused with science fiction? And there’s an overt religious element? And you expect us to hand this mishmash over to a first-time director?

Cue laughter.

At least that’s how George Nolfi’s experience pitching “The Adjustment Bureau” should have gone. Instead, for reasons that still aren’t entirely clear to him, Universal Pictures and Media Rights Capital gave him the go-ahead. “File it under just crazy enough to work, I guess,” said Mr. Nolfi, whose screenwriting credits include “Ocean’s Twelve” and “The Bourne Ultimatum.”

“The Adjustment Bureau,” written and directed by Mr. Nolfi, arrives in theaters Friday. Its central idea — that the course of people’s lives is predetermined and kept on track by angels who walk among us — is loosely based on a Philip K. Dick short story called “The Adjustment Team.” To warm up the tale and make it more appealing to women, Mr. Nolfi added a romance.

Matt Damon is David Norris, a New York congressman whose political future seems compromised when he falls in love with a dancer played by Emily Blunt. But the two are not meant to be together — at least not according to the plan written by “the Chairman” — and mysterious men in fedoras arrive to force them apart. Mr. Damon’s character refuses to accept his fate, setting off a chase through the streets of Manhattan.

“The Adjustment Bureau,” which cost about $62 million to make, comes at a time when movie factories are struggling to reinvent the romance. Audiences have started to reject romantic comedies, once one of Hollywood’s most reliable genres, as too formulaic. Period romantic dramas, which are expensive to make and tend to be ignored by younger audiences, were abandoned a long time ago, except for the occasional Oscar entry. And there are only so many Nicholas Sparks novels to adapt.

“Too many movies have killed what was the impetus for romance — human contact — by making it so readily available,” said Jeanine Basinger, the chairwoman of the film studies department at Wesleyan University. “Forget about romancing each other. You need sex so you just have a best friend for sex."

The only reliable romantic stories for Hollywood in recent years have been those wrapped in “Twilight Saga” werewolf fur. But that series is an anomaly sparked by four blockbuster books. Mr. Nolfi, who pursued a career in academia (philosophy and political science) before becoming a screenwriter, was interested in finding a new way to tell a romantic story. “I wanted to play with the puzzle pieces,” he said. “Can you take different genres and put them together in a way that creates something fresh?”

To that end he wrote a script that uses science fiction as a Trojan horse for a spiritual love story. All the sci-fi flourishes — the menacing adjusters can create traffic accidents and other unhappy distractions just by imagining them; a system of magic doors allows for speedy travel — mask the romantic machinery: boy falls for girl, forces pull them apart, boy and girl reunite.

Religion is equally risky territory for studio movies, which must appeal to the broadest possible audience. Critics savage spirituality-grounded films as sappy (“Eat Pray Love”), or the multiplex crowds decide that the subject is more than they want to deal with over a bucket of popcorn. (“Hereafter,” which also starred Mr. Damon, was a dud for Clint Eastwood.)

With the enormous box office success of “The Passion of the Christ” in 2004 Hollywood has grown more willing to court what it calls the faith-based audience. But those efforts have failed more often than succeeded — witness such nonstarters as “Evan Almighty” — perhaps because religious overtones in mainstream movies are usually counterbalanced with a degree of mockery.

Mr. Nolfi tried to handle the strong strains of faith in “The Adjustment Bureau” in a straightforward manner. (Yes, those adjusters are guardian angels.) But he kept it blurry enough — for instance, using the Chairman as a euphemism for God — to appeal to people with different spiritual beliefs and varying degrees of belief. He tried to make the angels relatable by making them fallible, whether they are losing a fedora to a gust of wind or flubbing an assignment.

“People are allowed to take from it what they want — an expression of a higher power, or God or just the Big Brother element that we all feel in our lives,” Ms. Blunt said.

Mr. Damon’s involvement was central to Universal’s decision to bite. He agreed to star in the movie despite Mr. Nolfi’s lack of directing experience because of “The Bourne Ultimatum,” parts of which were rewritten at the last minute. “Once I watched George problem solve on the fly like that, I knew he could do anything,” Mr. Damon said. (Good experiences with Mr. Nolfi on the Bourne franchise also contributed to Universal’s willingness to entrust him with such an ambitious project; the studio also saw it as the rare date movie that could appeal to both sexes.) David Norris is Mr. Damon’s first romantic leading role since “The Legend of Bagger Vance” in 2000.

Finding a co-star proved difficult. Mr. Nolfi initially pursued actresses with dance experience, but none seemed capable of handling what became known as “the bathroom scene.” The congressman and ballerina first meet in a men’s restroom and must immediately fall madly in love.

Casting directors had looked at almost 900 women when Ms. Blunt came in for a meeting. “She told me, ‘I can’t dance at all, but I think I can act, and I will work my heart out for you,’ ” Mr. Nolfi said. “That directness meant something to me.” Mr. Damon and Ms. Blunt filmed a test, and their on-screen chemistry was apparent to everyone involved.

“What makes this movie so ambitious is the love story,” Mr. Damon said. “If it doesn’t work, if you don’t believe it, then the whole thing is a disaster.”

Whether Mr. Nolfi has succeeded in coming up with a new romantic formula will be decided when reviews start to roll in and audiences have the chance to chew over the finished product. But early indications are promising. Prerelease moviegoer surveys show strong interest, and “The Adjustment Bureau” faces little direct competition. (Its biggest box office rival appears to be the animated “Rango.”) And distinctive can sell. “True Grit” and “Black Swan” outperformed more standard studio fare like “Little Fockers” and “Paranormal Activity 2.” As Mr. Nolfi said, “Less of the same seems to be the prevailing demand” from audiences.