Name: Retro Film Review: A Life Less Ordinary (1997)
Item: A Life Less Ordinary
Rating: 15
Author: @drax

(source:tmdb.org)

Hollywood is in much worse creativity crisis than the general quality of its films might indicate. More worrying thing is phenomenon of film makers who had made great things in independent or non-American cinema only to have their creativity and talent magically sucked out when they set foot in Hollywood. This phenomenon rarely reared its ugly head with more clarity than in the case of A Life Less Ordinary, 1997 comedy directed by Danny Boyle.

The team behind A Life Less Ordinary is the very same team that produced Trainspotting, black Scottish comedy often seen as one of the most important and influential 1990s films. This was first Hollywood production for Boyle, his favourite writer John Hodges, producer Andrew MacDonald and actor Ewan McGregor.

The plot of the film starts in Heaven. God is unhappy with the rate of people falling in love with each other, so Gabriel (played by Dan Hedaya) summons pair of angels - O'Reilly (played by Holly Hunter) and Jackson (played by Delroy Lindo) - and tells them they must either create at least one romantic couple or be banished from Heaven. Two people angels have in mind are Celine (played by Cameron Diaz), spoiled daughter of rich businessman Naville (played by Ian Holm) and Robert Lewis (played by Ewan McGregor), janitor working in Naville's firm. After losing girlfriend and job, Robert flips out and kidnaps Celine. Naville hires two private detectives to bring her back and those detectives are O'Reilly and Jackson, using the pursuit as the opportunity to make Celine and Robert falls in love with each other.

Boyle imagined A Life Less Ordinary as modern version of 1930s and 1940s Hollywood screwball comedies. Unfortunately, he wasn't the first director to come with this idea. So many other aspiring film makers throughout last six decades had done the same, so Boyle had to find some really original approach for his plan to work. Boyle apparently tried too hard – characters are quirky, situations are surreal and directing style is unusual. But quirkiness doesn't always guarantee humour. Characters and plot simply don't make any sense and what was supposed to be entertaining comedy turns into self-indulgent exercise in style over substance. To make things worse, Cameron Diaz and Ewan McGregor - two very talented actors – don't have any chemistry together. Talents of Hunter, Lindo, Holm, Stanley Tucci and plenty of other great performers were also tragically wasted in this film. There are moderately funny scenes, but general impression of this film is going to be extraordinarily disappointing.

RATING: 2/10 (-)

(Note: The text in its original form was posted in Usenet newsgroup rec.arts.films.reviews on April 14th 2004)