Paranoia: Firstest First World Problems

If you knew nothing about Paranoia (and there's no reason you should; I sure as fuck didn't know this was going to exist until about 3 weeks out when TNT started pumping it), and you looked at what the movie had to offer going in--Indiana Jones! High tech thriller! Beta Thor!--you might be inclined to think "Yeah, this is a movie I should see."

SERIOUS FACES

You would be wrong. Unless you actively enjoy bad movies (or all movies, like me), Paranoia is not an enterprise you should be funding. This movie shits the bed real hard.

Most of the problems in Paranoia could be solved if everyone involved were a little less fucking stupid. Liam Hemsworth plays Adam Cassidy, a drone at a massive tech company called Wyatt Corp. Adam has spent years on the ground floor, refining his skills, and finally has a shot to present a product he designed to his boss, Nicolas Wyatt (Gary Oldman). Problems arise when Wyatt ignores Liam's pitch, and Liam gets butt-hurt, and decides to tell his Fortune 500 CEO boss that he doesn't know how to run his business. Liam is promptly fired, along with every other member of his team.

Lesser Hemsworth's response to this is to take his team out drinking on the Wyatt Corp dime (because even though security had them empty out their desks, they somehow missed that Liam was packing a credit card that apparently accessed Wyatt's entire R&D budget), at which point they consume $16,000 worth of Ciroc and Liam bangs the hottest woman on the GD planet.

YUP.

Unfortunately, it's all downhill from there for our hero, as (surprise!) Wyatt Corp would like it's money back. He can either pay up (which he can't do because he's poor), or go be a corporate spy and steal trade secrets from rival company Eikon, run by Jock (not Jacque, JOCK) Goddard (Ford). Liam chooses to spy, which starts some loosely connected bullshit that comprises the rest of the plot.

The holes in this story are too many to count, so I'll just hit some of my favorites. First of all, the timeline is incredibly vague. I seriously think the whole movie took place over about 8 days in Liam's life; two at rich person boot camp (where you're given a classy ass watch, get to swim in a sick pool, and play chess with Gary Oldman), and six more stealing trade secrets while shtupping Amber Heard.

Then there's why Nick Wyatt needs Catniss's boy toy to steal an actual prototype of a cell phone JOCK is building after Wyatt steals the designs and the source code to build it, because apparently reverse-engineering is more fun? Hell if I know. 

The biggest issue, though, is Adam Cassidy himself. It's just impossible to give a damn whether he lives or that guy from Nip/Tuck blows his head off (which (SPOILER!) he attempts to do at one point). There's no reason to care about him. He talks about working ground floor R&D at a mega-tech company like it's burger flipping, even though he clearly has an amazing job. We're supposed to find his relationship with his Dad endearing, even though Liam spends the bulk of their screen time together telling him what a fucking loser he is. Did I mention how stupid he is, too? Because he's SO STUPID. You stole a credit card worth millions and you bought P-Diddy's vodka with it, you tool box. It's all so dumb that you almost forget that the movie completely fails to execute it's "big  (corporate) brother is watching" theme.

Paranoia is shooting 3% on Rotten Tomatoes, which officially graduates it to "impressively terrible" territory. The list of movies you should see instead of this one include everything else you can pay for at a theater. What a fucking disaster. 

Directed By: Robert Luketic (Jeez, look at that guy's smug face. It somehow makes this all worse.)

Starring: Liam Hemsworth, Gary Oldman, Harrison Ford, Amber Heard, Richard Dreyfuss, OH MY GOD HOW DID YOU GET THIS CAST?!?!

You Should see it if: You probably just shouldn't.