A LIFE LESS ORDINARY (1997)
A film review by Steve Kong Copyright 1997 Steve Kong
The team that made Trainspotting has come back and made a new film, but since I've never seen Trainspotting I didn't know what to expect when I stepped into the theatre to watch A Life Less Ordinary. What I got was a wonderfully hilarious and silly romantic, action, comedy. This is what Alicia Silverstone's horribly terrible Excess Baggage should have been.
God has implemented a new strategy in heaven. Angels are sent down to Earth to make people fall in love and if the angels are successful, they get to return to heaven. If not, they get to stay on Earth. O'Reilly (Holly Hunter) and Jackson (Delroy Lindo) are the first two angels that this policy gets stuck on. Their job? Get Robert (Ewan McGregor) and Celine (Cameron Diaz) to fall in love. The problem is that these are two completely different people. Celine is a spoiled rich girl of a millionaire and Robert is a lowly dreamer janitor for the company that Celine's dad owns.
Robert is fired and is being replaced by a robot. He is evicted from his home and dumped by his girlfriend. His life is in the toilet and he's just about to go postal. And he does. He goes to threaten his ex-boss into giving him back his job but in a chain of events ends up kidnapping the ex-boss' daughter, Celine.
Here we follow Robert and Celine in a road-trip type film and we see that as much as we, and the angels, want to have Robert and Celine fall in love, some strange cosmic force seems to be pulling them apart. This makes it different from the typical romantic comedy where the two would instantaneously fall in love. The two of them go through a series of events that lead them to fall in love together, at least we think. One of the problems though is that in the events that Robert and Celine go through don't really all seem to fit together well and they feel like a bunch of funny skits put together. Which for A Life Less Ordinary is not that bad.
I found myself laughing out loud many times during A Life Less Ordinary. The film definitely has its moments. The film is tries to be quirky and sometimes it works out very well, but other times it just seems like the film makers are trying way too hard.
Worth mentioning is the camera work and the music. The camera work is different to say the least. It is very stylistic camera work and there were more than a few shots that I really loved seeing. The music is also great. The score itself is somewhat forgettable but the music that goes along with the film is perfect. This includes "Beyond the Sea" which is the love song that Robert picks for Celine in a country-western karioke bar.
The performances were all great. I loved Holly Hunter's over-the-top performance the most. She is hilarious throughout the film. The two leads are great too, though, I would suggest a haircut for McGregor, that nappy hair just does not work. Cameron Diaz, who starred in one of my favorites from this summer, My Best Friend's Wedding, goes from the perky perfect girl in My Best Friend's Wedding to the conniving, cheating, and spoiled daughter in A Life Less Ordinary. And Delroy Lindoy is just fantastic as Jackson the poetic angel.
A Life Less Ordinary is a must see movie. It is hilarious and very enjoyable and its two-hour showing moves along rather quickly. When you see A Life Less Ordinary look for the exceptionally funny scene in which Robert demands a ransom from Celine's father. Now that I know what the Trainspotting team can do, I'm going to go rent Trainspotting and see how it's like.
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steve kong reviews@boiled.sbay.org
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