The Adjustment Bureau: A Review

For some reason I never realized that The Adjustment Bureau was supposed to be a romantic comedy. I never watch romantic comedies because the whole genre is too saccharine and cliché-ridden for my taste. I thought that The Adjustment Bureau was more along the lines of Inception so I went to see it.

Contrary to what one expects from the genre, the movie is not half bad. None of the actors is particularly annoying or talentless, which is a rare occurrence for a Hollywood movie. There are some really funny jokes at the expense of politicians, and who doesn't like to have a good laugh over the politicians' hypocrisy and ugliness?

One thing, however, left a bad aftertaste. The female lead dumps her fiancé right in the courtroom where they are supposed to get married and runs away with a guy whom she met casually a long time ago but who is the true love of her life. Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying that you can't meet a person and realize within minutes that this is the most important person in your life and that you will love them forever. Of course, you can. What bothers me, however, is this idea that a person you shared years of your life with can be discarded in a matter of seconds. Even if the relationship sucked, even if you were sick and tired of the person, it still is never easy to leave behind all of the memories, the shared experiences, the traditions, the private jokes that can't fail to accumulate over the years.

I'm not suggesting that people shouldn't dump partners who bore them or whom they don't really love for the sake of a suddenly awakened passion towards somebody else. I think they most definitely should. A loveless life is a life wasted, in my opinion. However, I can't imagine what kind of an emotionally undeveloped monster could dump the previous partner for a virtual stranger without a single pang. 

What's curious, though, is that there are hundreds of movies that insist on presenting precisely this scenario as the recipe for true passion. If this sells, that should mean people are buying it. Probably, so many people are deeply miserable in their personal lives that the fantasy of running away without a second thought proves cathartic.

P.S. I'm really hoping that nobody will leave comments of the "Relationships are hard work" bent. They are not supposed to be, and I'm definitely not trying to elicit this platitude by criticizing another one.