There are some Bourne choreographic devices — characters crossing their arms at the elbow as if winding them, moving the torso and pelvis in figure-eight patterns — that here have no expressive purpose.
The second advertisement is focused on cultural values, and promises Internet filtering devices, character education in the schools and more effective drug prevention and school discipline.
The film is peopled with appealing actors: Brie Larson shines in an underwritten role as Schumer's sister and Bill Hader is appealing despite the implausibility of nearly every aspect of his plot-device character, that of selfless magic boy who transforms our heroine into a real girl.
And Ms. Mangan accentuates the distances between people with a potent device: when characters speak, they don't face each other but stand side by side, addressing the audience, as if conversation itself were a thing of rough crossings.
This device — TV characters talking to the audience — has become common, and it's often used (as it is in another popular Fox show about spillage, breakage, chaos, and discipline, "Malcolm in the Middle") by adolescents, who, powerless in their own homes, need to complain to an understanding ear about the conditions they're living under.
His device of characters commenting upon the text in which they appear is centuries ahead of its time.
We have imitation as a plot device, where characters in novels or operas pretend to be something, or someone, they are not.
But in both the writing and the performance, the men exist more as devices than characters.
In another book, an epiphany at a counseling session might seem a cheap device for character advancement.
The novelty of the hour-by-hour conceit wore off long ago, and the various plot devices and characters are all familiar.
