A Life Less Ordinary . Newcity Chicago . 10-27-97

A Life Less Ordinary

DIRECTED BY: Danny Boyle

REVIEWED: 10-27-97

Let's make this simple: "A Life Less Ordinary" is a promising first feature, ideal as a modest "lifestyle accessory," to take a phrase from one of its characters. But when you realize that it's the third feature from the creative combine that brought us "Shallow Grave" and "Trainspotting," it's a tepid disappointment. Director Danny Boyle, writer John Hodge and producer Andrew MacDonald have starred Ewan McGregor in each of these three films with a stolen bag of cash at the center, and they repeat most of their technical crew as well. With "A Life Less Ordinary," one wonders if they thought after the great success of their first pair of pictures, they owed themselves one. A chance to stretch. A chance to explore. A chance to wallow in whimsy in the snow-peakedWasatch range of Utah. The lush snickers of "Shallow Grave" and the brilliant momentum of "Trainspotting" are little in evidence. Producer MacDonald is a grandson of Emeric Pressburger, who co-wrote, co-produced and co-directed several great films with Michael Powell, including "The Red Shoes" and "Stairway to Heaven (A Matter of Life and Death)." While Boyle's sense of decor remains strong, and Powell-Pressburger are among his admitted influences, "A Life Less Ordinary" is blemished with a subplot that is a cartooned-out rendition of "Stairway to Heaven." Mismatched angels Delroy Lindo -- tall, dark, perplexed -- and Holly Hunter -- short, snarled in long blonde hair and perpetually horny -- are dispatched by the archangel Gabriel (Dan Hedaya) to force, by any means necessary, the union of Scots migr, janitor and would-be trash novelist McGregor and spoiled heiress Cameron Diaz. Hunter has a grand time behind a machine-gun, tumbling off car crashes like a tiny Terminator in a Coen Brothers remake of those movies, smoking, getting punched, chewing tobacco, dressing in a suite of high-heeled zip-up knee-high boots (white vinyl, black leather, brown leather). McGregor plays the tousle-haired, passive waif-boy as charmingly as can be; as the peppery kidnap victim turned kidnap mastermind, Diaz is both funny and often dazzlingly lovely. Her prim and petulant heiress, living a life transacted in David Hockney-blue swimming pools in coronas of sunshine, in ebony Town Cars, dressed Audrey Hepburn-style in form-fitting black cashmere sweaters and body-hugging pants is suggestive but never developed through the script's arbitrary events. Oh yeah, comedy -- you don't need consistency! Pump in another pop song there, will ya, Danny boy? Energy, that's it, energy. Bit parts are interestingly cast -- Tony Shalhoub dazzles, as always, as a bar owner where he actually invests wit and pathos in a few lines where his character imagines "a heaven for glamorous pussy"; Stanley Tucci gets to act up as a demented dentist whose engagement to Diaz ends when she shoots him in the head after the opening credits. A fast-cut trailer for the movie led me to anticipate something special, but, oh well. Hodge has worked as an M.D. and the level of gore and extreme violence bears some fascination, but never the weight of the work of say, George Miller, another doc whose first two "Mad Max" movies seldom stepped wrong (in the context of the years they were made) in conveying the intensity of violent possibility. There are scattershot flickers of invention and wit throughout -- it's never dull and often charming -- yet the scenes that sing are only blissful kinetics, no subtext, no dread, no especially big laughs. "A Life Less Ordinary" is closer to rock video than anything Boyle has done yet -- images and ideas, clattering in a pop-drenched void, anxiously lying there, awaiting a fresh draft never to be written. Once the movie ends, we're treated to a spoken-to-camera duologue by McGregor and Diaz, followed by a lengthy Claymation sequence under the end credits. Don't some people know when they've had too much of an indifferent thing?

--Ray Pride

Full Length Reviews
A Life Less Ordinary
A Life Less Ordinary
A Life Less Ordinary
A Life Less Ordinary
A Life Less Ordinary

Capsule Reviews
A Life Less Ordinary

Other Films by Danny Boyle
Shallow Grave
Trainspotting

Film Vault Suggested Links
Addicted to Love

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