Film
Movie theaters, reviews and showtimes in New York, plus articles, trailers and more
- Home
- Box Office
- Listings
- Trailers
- Features
Bookmark this page- Edition:
A Life Less Ordinary (1997)
Director: Danny Boyle
Movie review
From Time Out Film Guide
Not a complete write-off, the first US venture by the Trainspotting team is still a misfire. A screwball comedy, set in Utah, with a contemporary twist, it aims for a liberating sense of anything goes, but falters on a fantasy element that doesn't play. McGregor is Robert, a whimsical Scot, stuck in a menial job in an American corporation. Sacked, dumped and evicted in the same day, he abducts the boss's daughter Celine (Diaz), who soon takes the kidnapping in hand just to spite her dad. Meanwhile, the private detectives gunning to get her back, Hunter and Lindo, are in fact angels on a mission to ensure the couple fall for each other. Love through jeopardy is their game plan. McGregor is charming, a hopeless soft touch, easily outclassed in the brains department by the mercurial Diaz (a real livewire who jump starts the movie more than once). They make an attractive couple, doing very nicely, thanks, without the Almighty's contrived interventions - gratuitously violent scrapes which lurch the film into forced, mostly unfunny black comedy and even animation. The Coens meet Frank Capra - a mismatch made in heaven.Author: TCh
Cast & crew
Director: Danny Boyle
Producer: Andrew Macdonald
Cast: Ewan McGregor, Cameron Diaz, Holly Hunter, Delroy Lindo, Ian Holm, Dan Hedaya, Ian McNeice, Stanley Tucci, Tony Shalhoub, Maury Chakin full cast
Genre(s): Comedy
Duration: 102 mins
Most popular on this site
Features
To the letter
Forty years later, Costa-Gavras's Z still brims with fury.
Mind over matter
David Cronenberg reflects on a most bizarre body: his own corpus of work.
Fool's gold
Can an Oscar win lead to a cursed career? Here are five stories of postaward professional meltdowns.
We are the championed
Terrorists and teens abound in this year's "Film Comment Selects."
A history of violence
Matteo Garrone's kaleidoscopic Gomorrah wallops you with Italy's crime crisis.
True romantic
James Gray exchanges urban amorality for amour in Two Lovers.
Playing in the dark
MoMA salutes pianist Stuart Oderman's 50 years as the one-man sound of silents.
Junk bonds
Cast and crew recall the making of the classic NYC drug drama The Panic in Needle Park.
What do you think?
Post your review now