Adjustment Bureau a Sci-Fi Sizzler

The Adjustment Bureau, a sci-fi romance starring Matt Damon and Emily Blunt, tells the story of a political hotshot who meets a woman in the men's room—something that was not part of his destiny. Two "adjusters" explain he must not see her again—leaving the two, in love, racing to outrun or outwit them. Critics are largely positive:

• In the New York Times, Manohla Dargis calls the movie “a fast, sure film about finding and keeping love across time and space.” First-time director George Nolfi “has brightened the season with a witty mix of science-fiction metaphysics and old-fashioned fluttery romance.”

• The Adjustment Bureau is “a smart and good movie that could have been a great one if it had a little more daring,” writes Roger Ebert in the Chicago Sun-Times. It deals with some scary themes, but “in the short term, the movie is a sorta heartwarming entertainment.”
• David Denby’s not so sure: He calls it a “strange, empty movie, a metaphysical Cracker Jack box without a prize in its empty-calorie depths.” Still, “Damon and Blunt’s scenes together, once they stop running, reach a pitch of romantic tension that has almost disappeared from movies,” he notes in the New Yorker.

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