A LIFE LESS ORDINARY
1/2
WenQing
Written by : David Hodge
Directed by : Danny Boyle
Main Cast : Ewan Mcgregor (Robert Lewis), Cameron Diaz (Celine Neville), Holly Hunter
Produced by : Twentieth Century Fox Films
Cinemas : reviewed in California
Rating : ** 1/2
TRAINSPOTTING TRIO PRODUCES LESS THAN ORDINARY YARN
It's hard not to feel disappointed. After all, Boyle, Hodge and McGregor gave you TRAINSPOTTING and SHALLOW GRAVE. I didn't like SHALLOW GRAVE, but at least it was interesting and compelling in a dark sort of way. With A LIFE LESS THAN ORDINARY, the team takes a brave leap into Hollywood studio film-making with enormous budget, but they end up with an uncompelling quirky movie that doesn't seem to make any sense.
A LIFE LESS THAN ORDINARY suffers from several things. One is Cameron Diaz; she's a pretty face (sometimes) and the camera simply adores her (the way cameras keep adoring Tom Cruise's teeth or Brad Pitt's face), but she's as wooden as they come. She tries to act, but it's pretty lame and I don't even know why McGregor's character falls in love with her anyway. This naturally gets all the chemistry between the two simply fizzling out and sputtering so that we don't even sympathise with them or understand why they get together finally.
The second problem hinges on the question: what is this movie supposed to be about? With the enormous budget given to this team, lots was blown on the hype (as it usually is with the Yankees in film), and what I dragged out of all the advertising was that the film-makers wanted to do a love story with some fluffy stuff rather than a dark underbelly situation as with their first two movies. But, the story becomes a bit too loose with itself and a bit too uncontrolled... sort of like the Coen brothers' THE HUDSUCKER PROXY? Pretty entertaining but too loosely organised to pull through?
With A LIFE LESS ORDINARY, there are too many things that don't seem to gel. Like the scenes of heaven with Angel Gabriel assigning two "cupids" (Holly Hunter being one of them) to get McGregor and Diaz to fall in love or else the two cupids can't get back to heaven. It doesn't seem to sustain itself even though it runs the whole thing. It especially doesn't fit into Diaz and McGregor going on and on about Fate at the end of the film, since Fate and Divine Intervention seem to be in contradiction.
A third problem is... what kind of movie is this? McGregor wants his job as a cleaner back from a big boss (Diaz's father) and kidnaps her (engineered by her of course, he's the goofy one throughout the film). And then what follows is a hopeful possibilities for comedy and romance, but the film achieves neither... and I can't even explain why. Maybe it's the script, maybe it's not funny enough, maybe McGregor is a Scotsman and everyone else has the American drawl? From kidnapping road- movie-ish stuff, it turns into dreamy romance-ish, to divine intervention and other stuff... so it gets too diversified to really pull off a good smooth movie. Because of how uneven it is, I don't know what A LIFE LESS ORDINARY is about. Especially the repeated references to McGregor being replaced by robots for his cleaning job... what is THAT all about?
Another problem is this weird dream McGregor seems to be having. It sounds poetic when he talks about it whimsically in his Scottish accent... something about Diaz saving him with an arrow through his heart... but then Diaz goes and echoes it at the climax of the movie and it goes all wrong. Maybe it's the Scottish accent? But the conclusion to the film is much too quirky... McGregor's character gets shot (with a gun) through the heart after all, but I shouldn't be revealing that bit. Hodge is trying to make McGregor out to be something of a dreamer (yes it's mentioned of him in the film 3 times at least), but it doesn't always seem like it, because too much other stuff like the Heaven sequences and the Diaz and McGregor song and dance sequence (very dreamy, but also reminding us of Diaz in THE MASK) are everywhere in the movie.
I think, with so much material to invest in one film, and a big budget, the taut film-making of this team goes awry. I don't expect A LIFE LESS ORDINARY to be a fast-paced and hard hitting movie the way TRAINSPOTTING was, since it's a love story. But it doesn't touch, it doesn't compel (there's that word I keep using) and it isn't even always interesting. I keep wondering how it will end, and when it does, it's nothing I expected (hence being less ordinary) but still not amazing enough because it's just too silly and, if I may venture, it's such a cop-out. After the runs between extremes of supernatural and dreaminess and reality, and even strangely alien elements that resemble a road movie, the ending is too weird... you have to watch it to get the idea. Maybe Scottish imagery doesn't hang well on American scenery and faces and... accents?
Anyway... with the close of the movie, what is the stop-motion animation for? (Yes you'll see it when it appears with the closing credits) It's so alien to the film I don't understand what it's doing there...
In the end, A LIFE LESS ORDINARY is so uneven that it doesn't serve to be entertaining nor exciting nor even romantic... it's just quirky... and not even interesting quirky.
The Flying Inkpot's Rating System
* Wait for the TV2 broadcast.
** A little creaky, but still better than staying at home with Tonight With Gurmit.
*** Pretty good, bring a friend.
**** Amazing, potent stuff.
***** Perfection. See it twice.
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