Gripping, exciting, entertaining, engaging and thrilling are words that will not be associated with new movie “The Circle,” released April 28.

The movie follows Mae Holland as she gets a new job one of the largest and most powerful social media and technology companies in the world, the Circle. She starts an experiment to “go transparent” and wear a small camera on her shirt so everybody can follow the feed and know what is going on to show how privacy is overrated because “knowing is good, but knowing everything is better.” The lack of privacy for her and her family begins to affect those she loves.

That’s it. Nothing else happens. A cast filled with big names like Tom Hanks, Emma Watson, John Boyega and Patton Oswalt seemed like it couldn’t possibly disappoint, but it seems like instead of spending money coming up with an original plot line or having action scenes most of the $18 million budget was spent on the actors.

Securing good actors for a movie is important, but they need a good script in order to show their abilities. Watson performed well, although the majority of the movie consisted of her staring at a cell phone screen with her brows furrowed. The plot line was good…as told in one paragraph on Wikipedia. If it is able to be captured in one paragraph I normally expect the movie to contain major plot twists, but nothing happened.

The character development was most seen in minor characters like Mae’s parents and her childhood friend, Mercer. All three eventually tell Mae they cannot be apart of her “transparent” lifestyle. Annie did become a non-workaholic by the end of the movie, but there was no reason for her actions. Her personality split down the middle with no transition from one to the other.

Toward the last five minutes, Mae pulled the rug out from under the main antagonists, Eamon Bailey and Tom Stenton, but the audience was taken by surprise because nothing even remotely led to this event and no switch or change of heart was shown.

I was not completely sure those two were actually antagonists until that moment. I was not sure the movie even had a main antagonist until then. They seemed shady but the characters were not doing outrageously horrible things.

Bailey did things only a little different from what is happening now with invasion of privacy and the information was not being used for sinister purposes. He talks about how being watched holds people accountable for their actions, so he isn’t a villain, he is just doing what he thinks is right.

By May 7 the movie had been predicted to make 20 million dollars, but it fell short only making a little over 15 million. Although it missed the mark in many categories, “The Circle” did address the world’s obsessive reliance on social media and how through the internet and social networks, people have lost all sense of privacy. Sadly, these topics do not belong in a 1 hour 50 minute movie; they belong in a YouTube short film.