The director, writer, and producer trio of Danny Boyle, John Hodge, and Andrew MacDonald had considerable success with their first two efforts. "Shallow Grave" and "Trainspotting" were both breakout box office successes, critically praised, and remain beloved cult classics to this day. Surely their third collaboration would be a similar hit, right? I'm sure that was the thought process everyone had when putting together "A Life Less Ordinary," especially the producers at Channel Four Films who put up much of the money for the film. Sadly, lightning would not strike a third time. "A Life Less Ordinary" would sink at the box office, receive middling reviews, and has largely been forgotten in the years since. It seems to me the only time the film comes up at all is when people are looking back on Boyle's career the way I am right now. Which begs the question: What went wrong on this third go-around between this team?
Celine Naville is the daughter of a mega-rich businessman but she's miserable in her personal life. Her controlling father has set her up on a string of unsuccessful relationships, the latest with a mildly unhinged dentist. Robert Lewis is a janitor working for her dad's company, who dreams of becoming an author of trashy novels. Upon discovering he's been fired and replaced with a robot, Robert kidnaps Celine. Celine seems more bemused than threatened by her kidnapper's actions, seeing this as a chance to get some money from her dad, run off and live her own life. Robert proves to be an incompetent criminal and often takes pointers from his captive. The two hide out together, bicker, and slowly warm up to one another. Incensed, Celine sends two bounty hunters after the pair, giving them free range to murder the man responsible for kidnapping his rebellious daughter and to bring her back.
That sounds like a fairly standard story line, doesn't it? While I don't think the two filmmakers have much in common, Danny Boyle's previous features had attracted some comparisons to the films of Quentin Tarantino and the many imitators that followed in his wake. I suppose the focus on memorable soundtracks, stylized dialogue, and gritty stories suggest some similarities. In the abstract, "A Life Less Ordinary" does sound like one of those "Pulp Fiction" knock-offs, a hyper-verbal love story of two rogues on the run together. There are shoot-outs and car crashes and lots of colorful dialogue. More than anything else, there is an overall kind of tonal smugness from the material that suggests a desperate desire to be observed as cool by the viewer. It was 1997 and such things were still somewhat in fashion, kind of, I guess. "A Life Less Ordinary" is a film about beautiful people with trendy haircuts doing daring and exciting stuff together, with a sense of humor about itself and a level of stylish excess that seeks to impress.
Perhaps, however, Boyle and Hodge were aware of how ordinary this script might have seen in the indie film landscape of the time. This might explain why "A Life Less Ordinary" instead veers sharply into the realm of magical realism. You see, the bounty hunters after Robert and Celine aren't ordinary enforcers. They are, in fact, angels sent from Heaven to ensure that Robert and Celine fall in love. Because, it would seem, making people fall in ever-lasting love is something angels concern themselves with. It's an insertion of a fantastical element in a film that otherwise doesn't have any fantasy elements.
Such a swerve might have successfully spiced up material that the audience had seen before but you can't start out as the new neo-noir from the director of "Shallow Grave" and "Trainspotting" and instead introduce explicitly divine intervention. You got a ease into that shit. To bring the guy up again and risk making it seem like I only know one nineties director/screenwriter, "From Dusk Till Dawn" deliberately turning from a stylized crime thriller to gory, outlandish creature feature is a tonal shift that worked. "A Life Less Ordinary" doesn't do that. It introduces the angelic conceit within its opening minutes before moving towards its more grounded elements, the otherworldly subplot weaving in and out of the story throughout.
That points towards what is probably the biggest problem with "A Life Less Ordinary." I called the film a neo-noir. It seems like a reasonable description, what with a story about kidnapping and ransom and young lovers on the run and sketchy hired guns. However, "A Life Less Ordinary" is actually a comedy. It is, in fact, an excessively wacky comedy. Characters have wildly specific personality quirks. Robert is always talking about his trashy novel idea, which everyone dismisses with the exact phrases. Celine is introduced playing William Tell with a revolver and an apple on her butler's head. (A butler who, it must be said, has a stereotypically droll British demeanor which is eventually subverted by his violent actions.) Timothy Olyphant shows up as a wide-eyed hitchhiker who does handstands. There's random appearances from an eccentric local played by Maury Chaykin, who speaks in an oddly specific manner, seems gripped by a degree of religious mania, and may or may not hear voices from his dog. There's a robot and a musical number and a game show themed dream sequence and a magic bullet that harmlessly passes through someone's heart.
Celine Naville is the daughter of a mega-rich businessman but she's miserable in her personal life. Her controlling father has set her up on a string of unsuccessful relationships, the latest with a mildly unhinged dentist. Robert Lewis is a janitor working for her dad's company, who dreams of becoming an author of trashy novels. Upon discovering he's been fired and replaced with a robot, Robert kidnaps Celine. Celine seems more bemused than threatened by her kidnapper's actions, seeing this as a chance to get some money from her dad, run off and live her own life. Robert proves to be an incompetent criminal and often takes pointers from his captive. The two hide out together, bicker, and slowly warm up to one another. Incensed, Celine sends two bounty hunters after the pair, giving them free range to murder the man responsible for kidnapping his rebellious daughter and to bring her back.
That sounds like a fairly standard story line, doesn't it? While I don't think the two filmmakers have much in common, Danny Boyle's previous features had attracted some comparisons to the films of Quentin Tarantino and the many imitators that followed in his wake. I suppose the focus on memorable soundtracks, stylized dialogue, and gritty stories suggest some similarities. In the abstract, "A Life Less Ordinary" does sound like one of those "Pulp Fiction" knock-offs, a hyper-verbal love story of two rogues on the run together. There are shoot-outs and car crashes and lots of colorful dialogue. More than anything else, there is an overall kind of tonal smugness from the material that suggests a desperate desire to be observed as cool by the viewer. It was 1997 and such things were still somewhat in fashion, kind of, I guess. "A Life Less Ordinary" is a film about beautiful people with trendy haircuts doing daring and exciting stuff together, with a sense of humor about itself and a level of stylish excess that seeks to impress.
Perhaps, however, Boyle and Hodge were aware of how ordinary this script might have seen in the indie film landscape of the time. This might explain why "A Life Less Ordinary" instead veers sharply into the realm of magical realism. You see, the bounty hunters after Robert and Celine aren't ordinary enforcers. They are, in fact, angels sent from Heaven to ensure that Robert and Celine fall in love. Because, it would seem, making people fall in ever-lasting love is something angels concern themselves with. It's an insertion of a fantastical element in a film that otherwise doesn't have any fantasy elements.
Such a swerve might have successfully spiced up material that the audience had seen before but you can't start out as the new neo-noir from the director of "Shallow Grave" and "Trainspotting" and instead introduce explicitly divine intervention. You got a ease into that shit. To bring the guy up again and risk making it seem like I only know one nineties director/screenwriter, "From Dusk Till Dawn" deliberately turning from a stylized crime thriller to gory, outlandish creature feature is a tonal shift that worked. "A Life Less Ordinary" doesn't do that. It introduces the angelic conceit within its opening minutes before moving towards its more grounded elements, the otherworldly subplot weaving in and out of the story throughout.
That points towards what is probably the biggest problem with "A Life Less Ordinary." I called the film a neo-noir. It seems like a reasonable description, what with a story about kidnapping and ransom and young lovers on the run and sketchy hired guns. However, "A Life Less Ordinary" is actually a comedy. It is, in fact, an excessively wacky comedy. Characters have wildly specific personality quirks. Robert is always talking about his trashy novel idea, which everyone dismisses with the exact phrases. Celine is introduced playing William Tell with a revolver and an apple on her butler's head. (A butler who, it must be said, has a stereotypically droll British demeanor which is eventually subverted by his violent actions.) Timothy Olyphant shows up as a wide-eyed hitchhiker who does handstands. There's random appearances from an eccentric local played by Maury Chaykin, who speaks in an oddly specific manner, seems gripped by a degree of religious mania, and may or may not hear voices from his dog. There's a robot and a musical number and a game show themed dream sequence and a magic bullet that harmlessly passes through someone's heart.
Do you see what I'm saying here? Hodge's screenplay heaps quirks atop quirks. Heaven is depicted not as a divine afterlife full of clouds and harps, angels wearing wings and halos. Instead, it resembles something more akin to an office building under pressure from the superiors above – in this case, Yahweh himself – to make quotas. Gabriel is not a dignified archangel concerning himself with blowing the horn at the end of days. Instead, he's a frustrated, grumpy pencil pusher played by Dan Hedaya at his Dan Hedaya-iest. Oh, what a delightfully silly contrast between the fantastical and the mundane! And, ya know, that could've been funny. I actually love it when stories contrast the supernatural with otherwise normal daily drudgery. However, “A Life Less Ordinary” is trying so hard to be wild and crazy that all the ideas start to blend together. I actually think that musical number is one of the film's better moments. It stands alongside embarrassingly bad ones, like a fist fight with Stanley Tucci as that crazy dentist. I suppose, if the film's problem could be diagnosed in as few words as possible, it would be that it's trying too hard.
An overly ambitious screenplay that slingshots around multiple different zany ideas brings with it an uncertain tone. In addition to everything else, “A Life Less Ordinary” is also a self-aware example of the romantic comedy genre. From the minute Robert and Celine are thrown together by fate, we know they are going to fall in love. The movie knows that we know this too. It is the angels' mission to make sure these two get together. This acts as a self-reflective reasoning for the familiar but improbable cliches of the rom-com genre. The unlikely circumstances that bring these two together are the results of a heavenly conspiracy. The big romantic gesture Robert does to win Celine back after the end-of-the-second-act schism is a poem written by one of those same angels. This is basically the movie saying that it knows these cliches are hoary nonsense, the angels acting a bit like the writers of the screenplay trying to engineer these scenarios. However, doing a crappy old cliché while pointing out that it's a crappy old cliché isn't actually a subversion. It's the same old lazy writing with an extra hat of unearned pretensions atop it.
We all know that romantic comedies follow these silly and unlikely plot points. It comes with the territory, like the teenagers running off to have sex in a really dangerous place in the slasher movies. The best rom-coms overcome this shortcoming based on the strength and charm of their leads. The lack of suspense in knowing that the boy and the girl will end up together is made up for by the audience truly wanting to see them succeed. That might be the biggest area where “A Life Less Ordinary” fails. If we really liked Robert and Celine, it would make a lot of the other problems the film has more forgivable. Unfortunately, this is not the case. Celine remains antagonistic to Robert and everyone around her for most of the film. Robert comes across as a bullied and indecisive idiot. When the two fall into bed together, it does not feel like an natural event of the story but rather a contrivance. That's because it basically is, a manipulation from above, which is why a nudging acknowledgement of tropes is generally less desirable than an unironic embracing of them.
The lack of chemistry between Celine and Robert isn't only the fault of the script. Ewan McGregor stars as Robert and he does fine in the role. Even at this relative early stage of his career, McGregor was already a total professional. His skills are not enough to make a protagonist pushed around by the whims of the plot have more depth than he does. However, he's a reasonably entertaining lead. When paired with Cameron Diaz as Celine, something feels amiss. Diaz, an uneven talent on the best of days, hits mostly false notes here. She comes across as somewhat flat in her delivery throughout much of the movie. Her attempts to add some emotional sincerity or pathos to the material come across as forced or phony. This is most apparent in the morning after the characters sleep together for the first time. Diaz goes for sexy smoldering when a degree of vulnerability would've done a better job at making this pairing seem more natural.
Ultimately, what is a rom-com without a central couple that we can become invested in? Not that romantic and not that funny either. That makes the increasingly crazy decisions the script goes in seem all the sweatier. That same instinct is apparent in the supporting cast. “A Life Less Ordinary” actually has an impressive crop of names in its credits. Holly Hunter and Delroy Lindo are the angels on the couple's trail. Lindo's tough guy appearance is counteracted by a quiet, observational personality and the soul of a poet. Unfortunately, it comes across as yet another one of the movie's cloying bits than something more realized. Hunter, normally a reliable presence in any film, can do nothing but hopelessly ham her way through this material. That's actually the choice most of the secondary players made. Ian Holm as Celine's dad, Hedaya, Tucci and Tony Shaloub – whose role is especially inessential – grimace and flex their faces as cartoonish characters that never come across as anything more than annoying caricatures.
Maybe it's only because so much of “A Life Less Ordinary” feels overburdened with its own desire to be wacky. However, the techniques Danny Boyle and his team utilized in his previous feature to electrifying effect come off as somehow both blander and more annoying here. Brian Tufano and Masahiro Hirakubo are back on cinematography and editing duties. The soundtrack remains hyper-specific and carefully chosen. However, the formula is off. A car chase sequence comes across as manic and overbearing, rather than energetic and captivating. The brief glimpses we get at that game show dream sequence are another excessive addition to a pot too full with ingredients already. By the end credits, where the story is resolved via stop-motion animated cartoon sequence, I was officially sick of “A Life Less Ordinary's” bullshit. The film represents the strengths of Boyle's previous two movies in a totally undisciplined and unbalanced form.
An overly ambitious screenplay that slingshots around multiple different zany ideas brings with it an uncertain tone. In addition to everything else, “A Life Less Ordinary” is also a self-aware example of the romantic comedy genre. From the minute Robert and Celine are thrown together by fate, we know they are going to fall in love. The movie knows that we know this too. It is the angels' mission to make sure these two get together. This acts as a self-reflective reasoning for the familiar but improbable cliches of the rom-com genre. The unlikely circumstances that bring these two together are the results of a heavenly conspiracy. The big romantic gesture Robert does to win Celine back after the end-of-the-second-act schism is a poem written by one of those same angels. This is basically the movie saying that it knows these cliches are hoary nonsense, the angels acting a bit like the writers of the screenplay trying to engineer these scenarios. However, doing a crappy old cliché while pointing out that it's a crappy old cliché isn't actually a subversion. It's the same old lazy writing with an extra hat of unearned pretensions atop it.
We all know that romantic comedies follow these silly and unlikely plot points. It comes with the territory, like the teenagers running off to have sex in a really dangerous place in the slasher movies. The best rom-coms overcome this shortcoming based on the strength and charm of their leads. The lack of suspense in knowing that the boy and the girl will end up together is made up for by the audience truly wanting to see them succeed. That might be the biggest area where “A Life Less Ordinary” fails. If we really liked Robert and Celine, it would make a lot of the other problems the film has more forgivable. Unfortunately, this is not the case. Celine remains antagonistic to Robert and everyone around her for most of the film. Robert comes across as a bullied and indecisive idiot. When the two fall into bed together, it does not feel like an natural event of the story but rather a contrivance. That's because it basically is, a manipulation from above, which is why a nudging acknowledgement of tropes is generally less desirable than an unironic embracing of them.
The lack of chemistry between Celine and Robert isn't only the fault of the script. Ewan McGregor stars as Robert and he does fine in the role. Even at this relative early stage of his career, McGregor was already a total professional. His skills are not enough to make a protagonist pushed around by the whims of the plot have more depth than he does. However, he's a reasonably entertaining lead. When paired with Cameron Diaz as Celine, something feels amiss. Diaz, an uneven talent on the best of days, hits mostly false notes here. She comes across as somewhat flat in her delivery throughout much of the movie. Her attempts to add some emotional sincerity or pathos to the material come across as forced or phony. This is most apparent in the morning after the characters sleep together for the first time. Diaz goes for sexy smoldering when a degree of vulnerability would've done a better job at making this pairing seem more natural.
Ultimately, what is a rom-com without a central couple that we can become invested in? Not that romantic and not that funny either. That makes the increasingly crazy decisions the script goes in seem all the sweatier. That same instinct is apparent in the supporting cast. “A Life Less Ordinary” actually has an impressive crop of names in its credits. Holly Hunter and Delroy Lindo are the angels on the couple's trail. Lindo's tough guy appearance is counteracted by a quiet, observational personality and the soul of a poet. Unfortunately, it comes across as yet another one of the movie's cloying bits than something more realized. Hunter, normally a reliable presence in any film, can do nothing but hopelessly ham her way through this material. That's actually the choice most of the secondary players made. Ian Holm as Celine's dad, Hedaya, Tucci and Tony Shaloub – whose role is especially inessential – grimace and flex their faces as cartoonish characters that never come across as anything more than annoying caricatures.
Maybe it's only because so much of “A Life Less Ordinary” feels overburdened with its own desire to be wacky. However, the techniques Danny Boyle and his team utilized in his previous feature to electrifying effect come off as somehow both blander and more annoying here. Brian Tufano and Masahiro Hirakubo are back on cinematography and editing duties. The soundtrack remains hyper-specific and carefully chosen. However, the formula is off. A car chase sequence comes across as manic and overbearing, rather than energetic and captivating. The brief glimpses we get at that game show dream sequence are another excessive addition to a pot too full with ingredients already. By the end credits, where the story is resolved via stop-motion animated cartoon sequence, I was officially sick of “A Life Less Ordinary's” bullshit. The film represents the strengths of Boyle's previous two movies in a totally undisciplined and unbalanced form.
The first time I saw “A Life Less Ordinary,” I fucking hated it. I found its over-the-top sense of trying-too-hard whimsy unbearable. Based on how much I loved “Trainspotting” and “Shallow Grave,” perhaps I went in with overly high expectations. Either way, this was definitely not what I was expecting. Upon rewatch, I've upgraded my opinion from hatred to simply thinking the film is simply not good. Such a wild mismatch of tones and elements can still classify as only a fiasco, a wild miscalculation of all involved about what does and doesn't work together. However, that song and dance number actually isn't too bad. A quickly cut montage of Robert and Celine practicing tough-talking over the phone is pretty good. Buried, somewhere in this wild mishmash of ingredients, might have been a good film. This isn't it, however, and it would be a long time before Danny Boyle tried his hand at a romantic comedy again. [Grade: C-]