I've said it before and I'll probably say it again before May hits: We're in the off-season for movies. Every so often—once a year if you're lucky—you'll get a fantastic mainstream Hollywood movie in February or March like Rango, an aberration that for some reason* gets released in the wasteland of film that is the beginning of the year. But more often, you'll just get tons of complete shit; movies whose half-assed titles belie the entire half-assed filmmaking process, comedies without jokes, damaged thrillers, and failed attempts at laboratory-testing franchises. We're on the Island of Misfit movies until May, and that's fine: Every industry needs a place to send their cast-offs and failures for undiscerning consumers to pick over, a Nordstrom's Rack or an army surplus store.

But usually, the shitty movies that get released at this time of year don't evoke the kind of longing that The Adjustment Bureau inspires in its viewers. This is a decent movie, and with just a tweak or two more, it could have been an excellent one, a fall prestige sci-fi thriller. Matt Damon isn't doing a Nicolas Cage phone-in as New York state congressman David Norris; he seems to relish playing a young up-and-coming politician. And he and Emily Blunt have real chemistry as they progress from an abnormally weighty casual encounter to a more meaningful relationship. Blunt's character, an experimental ballet dancer named Elise Sellas, is a charming burst of chaos in Norris's overplanned life; she appeals to the working class side of him that chafes at the over-market-tested constraints of modern politics.

But Adjustment Bureau is based on a story by Philip K. Dick, so of course things get weird.

(More after the jump.)

Turns out a group of fedora-wearing supernatural agents manage the destinies of every human being on Earth and for reasons that aren't entirely clear at first, they want Norris and Sellas to be apart. John Slattery brings a nice workaday shrug to his role as an adjuster. When Norris causes problems for the bureau, Slattery slumps a little bit and whines about how nothing is ever easy with this job, and he could just as easily be a middle-manager at a software firm. His lack of gravitas is his characterization. Terence Stamp, as a higher-up adjuster named Thompson, is a bit more traditional in his sci-fi bad-guy menace, but it's totally worth it to see Stamp chew on a juicy monologue about free will in the center of the film. He's not a Zod-level badass here, but we have no doubt he would kill Norris immediately if he could.

The surprising thing about Bureau is that it isn't structured like a sci-fi thriller. There are some chases and a couple of jumpy moments, but the film is mostly built like a romantic comedy: Couple meets cute, and forces conspire to keep them apart. While it's a delight to see the way screenwriter/director George Nolfi cobbles together a series of impressive sci-fi special effects on what must have been, at most, a tenth of the budget of a Michael Bay thriller, you wish he'd drop a chase scene or two and give us some more characterization. Slattery's character pretty much disappears from the film at the halfway mark, and Anthony Mackie's bureau agent isn't as well-rounded as he should have been. With a bit less emphasis on genre trappings—including the not-as-laughable-as-it-could-have-been revelation that the agents' powers are derived largely from their hats—Bureau could have become the kind of fall think-piece that requires multiple viewing. As it is, it's definitely a contender if Hollywood ever tries to launch the Off-brand Oscars.

* I suspect Rango probably didn't have the confidence of the studio behind it, because it's about hideous little creatures behaving like real people.