One of those movies where a non-“blockbuster” movies manages to get a bunch of big stars—Emma Watson, Glenne Headley, Tom Hanks, Fielding Mellish, er, Patton Oswalt, Karen Gillan—and it really doesn’t help, because they’re too busy being recognizable-actors-acting-recognizably to actually sell it, and this movie isn’t really a “star-studded vehicle” sort of movie.
It’s ambitious, in a hamfisted way. Emma Watson, doing a pretty passable American accent, gets a job at a company that appears to be the Ur-Tech-Company: social media company, hardware company, lifestyle brand, this company appears to be everything, run by Tom Hanks playing the second coming of Steve Jobs and Fielding Mellish, er, Patton Oswalt as his creepily disingenuous second-in-command. The movie traces the development of their rationalizations for gradually stripping away all privacy from all people, with results that don’t really surprise very much as the movie goes on.
At least it doesn’t end with the huge crowd of people the climactic speech is given in front of all cheering. So there’s that.