A Life Less Ordinary

Bomb Rating: 

This film is essentially little more than a continuing stunt.

This film is essentially little more than a continuing stunt. Though filledwith all kinds of crap that will seem interesting to the easily entertained, it's really just a cover for the fact that writer John Hodge and director Danny ("Trainspotting") Boyle woke up one morning and realized they were making a film that didn't contain a single original idea.

To compensate for this, they introduce the whole heaven element as a way to fool us into thinking they're creative. The film starts out in heaven as we're introduced to two angels, Jackson (Delroy Lindo) and O'Reilly (Holly Hunter). Gabriel (Dan Hedaya) is lamenting the failure of love, so Jackson and O'Reilly are given one last chance to make two people fall for each other: Robert (Ewan McGregor) and Celine (Cameron Diaz).

The chance for a decent movie is destroyed when this hokey, new-agey gunk is thrown into the works. Why I should care what happens to Robert and Celine when I know their guardian angels are running around tweaking circumstance? It doesn't help that heaven is apparently filled with a bunch of criminals: Robert is compelled to kidnap the rich Celine, who decides she wants to play the hostage to get back at her father (Ian Holm).

If Boyle knew what he was doing, he wouldn't have revealed that Jackson and O'Reilly were angels until the end of the film. At least that way, the audience would have been confused by the chaos instead of merely irritated by it. Boyle puts all his cards on the table at the beginning of this film and then tries to pretend he's playing a serious game of poker. That the film folds early is no coincidence.

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