A LIFE LESS ORDINARY
A film review by David N. Butterworth
Copyright 1997 David N. Butterworth
Rating: **1/2 (Maltin scale)
"In the old days, you just had to introduce a man and a woman and nature did the rest."
So laments Jackson (Delroy Lindo), an angelic bounty hunter of sorts who, along with co-operative O'Reilly (Holly Hunter), has been ordered back to earth by "Chief of Police" Gabriel (Dan Hedaya) to help unite an unlikely couple in "A Life Less Ordinary."
Robert (Ewan McGregor) is a janitor who has just lost his job to automation. Celine (Cameron Diaz) is the needs-to-be-indulged, spoiled little rich girl who also happens to be the boss' daughter. When Robert bursts into Dad's (Ian Holm) office demanding his job back, Celine provides for some spontaneous kidnapping material. Robert, a bit of a dreamer, hasn't thought this out very well, but he'll be damned if he'll be replaced by a bloody robot, and the chase is on!
Sounds like something from the Coen brothers you're thinking. Well, funny you should say that... "A Life Less Ordinary" contains a scene of a car parked by the side of a freshly-plowed field with our protagonist scrambling for his life in a ditch (see: "Blood Simple"). It's got a man being walked through a thicket of silver birches to an imminent, grisly end (see: "Miller's Crossing"). And it's got an attractive, slightly wacky couple being hounded by some not-of-this-earth malevolence (see: "Raising Arizona").
Could the casting of Coen alums Hunter and Hedaya simply be coincidental?
As it happens, the team that made "A Life Less Ordinary" isn't Joel and Ethan Coen but rather the British threesome responsible for the black comedy "Shallow Grave" and last year's transatlantic junkie hit, "Trainspotting" (both of which starred McGregor): producer Andrew MacDonald, writer John Hodge, and director Danny Boyle. For their first foray into the American mainstream, if you can call it that, what better way to pay homage to the Coens' wild and whacked-out style than to try to duplicate it?
For a good proportion of the film, they succeed.
The film is not as satisfying as it might be, however, due to some basic miscalculations. Diaz has already proven she can't sing (in "My Best Friend's Wedding"), and the remarkably similar "dream sequence" in a Karaoke bar just doesn't work. The soundtrack, so well synchronized in "Trainspotting," is all over the map here, with some songs actually drowning out the actors' dialog in places. Lindo and Hunter are oddly peripheral in this picture, with Hunter resembling a strung-out Sarah Jessica Parker, adding to her increasing roster of eccentric, unstable women you'd be afraid to take home to Ma. And what's with that cutesy claymation bit over the end credits?
In "A Life Less Ordinary," writer Hodge does comes up with some very funny scenarios, especially those involving the honest, naïve Robert hopelessly attempting to pass himself off as a ruthless tough guy. His love for Celine might turn out as obvious as the trashy novel he plans to write, but that's a cracked American romance for you, even as envisioned by a trio of Brits.
-- David N. Butterworth dnb@mail.med.upenn.edu
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