I'M A DREAMER (AREN'T WE ALL?)
by Kristian Lin
There's still some time left, but I'm nominating A LIFE LESS ORDINARY as the year's most unfairly bashed film. You'd hate to think of a better film getting worse treatment from the critics. There have been some good reviews, but the early negative ones have probably killed whatever chance this movie had of doing much business. That's too bad, because A LIFE LESS ORDINARY is a true oddity with enough marvels in it to gratify you.
This road film begins when a recently-fired janitor named Robert (Ewan MacGregor) decides to kidnap Celine (Cameron Diaz), a spoiled heiress on the outs with her father. They're pursued by two angels (Delroy Lindo and Holly Hunter) who are masquerading as hit men and whose real mission is to make sure that Robert and Celine fall in love.
Most of the bad notices have taken an aggrieved tone of "How dare the people who made TRAINSPOTTING do something as light as this?" You'd think that the reviewers would appreciate the adventurous spirit that director Danny Boyle and writer John Hodge bring to this genre picture. Instead, though, they've criticized the filmmakers for going off the rails, as if the Coen brothers or Quentin Tarantino never went too far. A LIFE LESS ORDINARY isn't a great film, and it certainly isn't fully realized the way TRAINSPOTTING is. But the filmmakers seem relieved to have turned from TRAINSPOTTING's bleakness to making this giant piece of candy. Yes, Boyle and Hodge lose their judgment in the last half hour, and the movie's ending really goes splat. That's more than compensated for by the number of ideas that take flight, like Robert serenading Celine with a karaoke version of "Beyond the Sea." The dance that follows has an exhilarating lyrical joy that you won't find in any of Boyle's previous movies. A LIFE LESS ORDINARY may be excessive, but it's certainly preferable to the slick, soulless efficiency of Boyle and Hodge's debut film, SHALLOW GRAVE.
In addition to the filmmakers' off-kilter point of view, A LIFE LESS ORDINARY also boasts some old-fashioned movie-star glamor. Early on, Robert is accosted by a menacing redneck named Tod Johnson (a hilarious Maury Chaykin). Just when the scene seems to be building to a hysterical climax, it goes in an entirely different direction, as Celine defuses the situation by showing up wearing a bedsheet and spinning a story about Robert being a pop star who's hiding from the press with his new wife. The scene was obviously written with a disarmingly sexy actress in mind, and could have easily fallen flat, but Cameron Diaz, who proves what a nimble actress she is, brings it all. Diaz, you'll remember, put some teeth into a wimpy, underwritten part in MY BEST FRIEND'S WEDDING. Here, she's not afraid to emphasize Celine's unattractive side, playing the character as bratty, impatient, headstrong and dangerous to be around - she even points a gun at a 12-year-old girl's head. Now how many actresses could get away with that? Diaz does, and it's because she finds the neglected child inside the character and lets her find redemption when she falls in love.
So completely does she inhabit the character that she darned near obliterates MacGregor, engaging and hugely talented fellow that he is. That's only appropriate, since Celine takes over her kidnapping, that Diaz take over the movie. Nevertheless, he projects a genuine and unobtrusive sweetness that's really likeable, and it's refreshing to see the lead in a movie like this behaving unheroically. One of the movie's funnier scenes comes when he's told he's going to be killed - and he bursts into tears. Still, even though Celine's attraction to Robert's regular-guy charm is credible, MacGregor's overmatched by his leading lady.
Something similar happens with the angels. Holly Hunter and Delroy Lindo have been paired up not because of their chemistry (which they have little of), but because of how they look together. Lindo's a fine actor who has a nice understated moment when he reminisces about a girl he once knew, but Hunter gets the better of this duo. Her accent goes from Cruella de Vil to a fearsome hillbilly drawl, she vamps madly when auditioning for the hit man job, and gets this terrifying gleam in her eye when she menaces the lovers with a gun as she's hanging onto the hood of their truck. She can be bizarre and intense under normal circumstances, and here she's downright crazed, but the odd part is that she's somehow cuddly, too. It's possible that this is her funniest performance to date.
To be sure, A LIFE LESS ORDINARY is definitely not for everyone. A lot of violence is played for laughs, which doesn't always work. The filmmakers really let their imaginations run amuck, and it results in a wildly uneven crazy quilt of a film. But A LIFE LESS ORDINARY is more than good enough to deserve a following, and the tremendous skill and inspiration of Danny Boyle and John Hodge renders them as promising as any other new filmmakers in the world.
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