A Life Less Ordinary isn‚Äôt the TYPICAL, typical sleeper; it was heavily publicized and highly promoted by the studio, including even a pretty brilliant Michel Gondry music video for the original Beck song “Deadweight.” It‚Äôs a less typical, typical sleeper; people just didn‚Äôt like it very much. I maintain it‚Äôs because it was aimed at the wrong market. The movie was originally billed as a Tarantino-style hipster romance. It‚Äôs nothing like that. It‚Äôs more a feel-good fantasy that should grab fans of movies like The Fifth Element or the aforementioned Jean-Pierre Jeunet‚Äôs Amelie. It‚Äôs a goofy, happy, comedy love story. NOT Pulp Fiction.

But this article isn’t a referendum on studio decision-making. I hate to use words like “charming” or “delightful” when describing a love story, because they seem to come pre-charged with undertones of “underwhelming” and “don’t-expect-too-much.” So let’s go with “funny-as-hell” and “awesome.” 1997 gave us the Star Wars Special Edition reset alongside other blockbusters like The Lost World: Jurassic Park and Men in Black. All in all, it was a pretty good year for movies, Con Air notwithstanding. So who the hell knew what to do with a movie about 2 matchmaker angels threatened with earthly transfiguration if they failed in their assignment to get the recently laid-off janitor and the billionaire heiress to fall in love.

So … About that…

The two angels, (Holly Hunter and Delroy Lindo) whose job it is to introduce future spouses to each other, have had a bad run of divorces. They are heaven-sent from a retro 50s/60s style police station by Chief of Police, Gabriel (played by Cheers fan-favorite Dan Hedaya who, coincidentally, is also in Alien 4). Their new case is a toughy, and if they fail, they will be punished by being forced back into mortality.

The couple?

Ewan McGregor is the happy-go-unlucky janitor, Robert, who is replaced by a floor-sweeping, (coincidentally R2D2-looking) robot janitor. Later that same day, he’s dumped by his girlfriend in favor of her aerobics instructor, and for the coup de grace, the angels show up incognitus to repossess his car and home and couch and, well all of it.¬†Cameron Diaz is the billionaire’s malcontent daughter, Celine Naville, complete with zebra print gloves and blue cashmere blazer. She resents her father (as all billionaire children should) and just recently (though probably accidentally) shot her latest suitor in the face with a .44 caliber revolver.

Other electro-job theft:
With the increasing use of home robots like automatic vacuums, the soon-to-be-popular automatic lawn mower, and the dramatic rise in production-based robotics (especially in relation to oceanic oil platforms), more and more jobs are being taken from humans and given to machines. While it may be more ideal to give war-specific duties to radio controlled robots (i.e. the Predator drones in Iraq and Afghanistan), the idea of the world envisioned by Kurt Vonnegut in his prophetic 1952 novel Player Piano still strikes most people as just plain creepy.

Extended List of Players:
Robert – Ewan McGregor (The Island)
Celine – Cameron Diaz (The Mask, Very Bad Things)
O’Reilly – Holly Hunter (Thirteen, The Incredibles)
     Matchmaker Angel #1
Jackson – Delroy Lindo (Congo, Romeo Must Die)
     Matchmaker Angel #2
Mr. Naville – Ian Holm (Alien, Bless the Child)
     Said billionaire
Mayhew – Ian McNeice (Top Secret!, White Noise)
     Said billionaire’s butler/assistant
Elliott – Stanley Tucci (Maid in Manhattan, The Terminal)
     Celine’s most recent suitor and one hell of a good dentist
Todd Johnson – Maury Chaykin (Blindness, Harriet the Spy)
     A “regular man” who befriends Robert (also has a barking best friend who hasn’t been the same since the war)

The romantic plan? A kidnapping!

Stockholm Syndrome:
Named after a 6-day bank robbery/hostage situation in August 1973 in BINGBINGBING! you got it: STOCKHOLM, Sweden. This syndrome is characterized by victims of hostagery becoming emotionally attached to their captors. Though rare, afflictees display defensive attitudes when their captors are punished. In the extreme case of Jaycee Lee Dugard, after having been raped and held captive for over 18 years, Dugard described her assailant as good with kids. Jaycee Dugard was just rescued this past August after her 1991 abduction and though she was held in a so-called “secret backyard” surrounded by a privacy fence and tarp, referred to the kidnapper as a “great man.”

So Robert storms back into the offices of Mr. Naville with an attitude and no plan at all. Naville is having a talk with Celine, informing her that she will have to work for her money now. Robert bursts through the door carrying a jani-bot. He demands his job back, and is immediately dealt with by a pack of fatty security guards. In the office melee that ensues, Celine kicks a gun to Robert who uses it to get away from the guards and then to shoot Mr. Naville in the leg. He kidnaps Celine and drives away with her into the countryside to try and figure something out while the line between who is directing the kidnapping begins to blur. And as the 2 angels (again, in disguise in disguise in disguise) are hired by Naville to track down Robert you wonder, is their plan working ingeniously or failing spectacularly.

Top 5 Wacky Syndromes!! (these are all real by the way…)
5 – Exploding Head Syndrome
Sufferers hear intermittent explosion-like noises in their heads, usually just after having fallen asleep.
4 – Alice in Wonderland Syndrome (aka Micropsia)
Sufferers will see people and objects as being much smaller than they actually are. So named because of the belief that Lewis Carroll may have been afflicted.
3 – Walking Corpse Syndrome
Sufferers believe they have lost body parts or are in fact dead and can feel and smell their flesh rotting; has been linked to schizophrenia and cocaine use.
2 – Genital Retraction Syndrome
Sufferers believe that their genitals are either shrinking or being retracted into their bodies; more common among cultures with widespread belief in witchcraft.
#1! – Jumping Frenchmen of Maine Syndrome
Sufferers react violently to loud noises by screaming, jumping, and wildly gesticulating. Even more interesting, sufferers seem compelled to obey loudly spoken, authoritative commands, going so far as to attack loved ones if sternly directed to do so.

This week’s underappreciated actor of the week:
Maury Chaykin!
One of my personal favorites. For his portrayal of the first town sheriff in the great SyFy series Eureka to his great character work in Cutthroat Island and Mousehunt. And his role in the standout episode of season two of Boston Legal, I salute him for being Chaykin, not stirred. (ouch)

Memorable Line:
“Oh, and that’s all I am to you, isn’t it? The latest kidnapper. A lifestyle accessory. And if it doesn’t work, it doesn’t matter, ‘cause you can always get another one.”   – Robert

Standout Scene:
The angels are doing their best to put Robert and Celine into situations that might spark that initial bit of love-ness, and have come to a point of desperation – the plan is to put one of them into a deadly situation in the hopes that the other will abandon logic and attempt a rescue. I hate to give anything away (to the point where I’m hopelessly vague), but set to the incredible song “Leave” by R.E.M. and featuring the equally incredible trademark camera work from The Genius Danny Boyle, the “Jeopardy Scene” stands out as the kind of movie-making that belongs in an Oscar montage reserved for the dead-guy part of the Oscar telecast.

I‚Äôll admit, it can be hard to pump up a romanticomedy, but some of them just do it different. From the great off-pitch but honest actor-sung musical number to the love-poem-writing angels, A Life Less Ordinary definitely does it different. There are a few romaticomedies like John Wayne’s The Queit Man, Adrien Brody’s Dummy and Keir Dullea’s 2001: A Space Odyssey that leave the rom-com genre behind and are just great movies. A Life Less Ordinary is that kind of movie.

Susie Salmon (Saoirse Ronan) is a typically awkward 14 year old girl. She wants to be a photographer, she loves her siblings Lindsey and Buckley, she’s never kissed a boy and she wants to shed any sense of the ordinary that might be lurking about inside of her. After receiving a camera for her birthday, she proceeds to shoot random pictures until using up every last roll of film her parents, Jack and Abigail, had given her. Her parents promise that they will develop one roll of film per month, which obviously leaves her quite disappointed. After school one day, she’s approached by Ray, the boy she has a massive crush on. Ray kind of looks a little old for Susie if you ask me, because Saorise Ronan barely even looks 14. She looks more like she’s 11. Anyways, to her complete shock and surprise Ray wants to meet Susie Saturday at the mall in the gazebo, but tragically, this will never happen.

I’m not giving away anything by telling you Susie is murdered by the Salmon’s neighbor, George Harvey, who is played brilliantly by Stanley Tucci. On her way home from school, she’s lured by Harvey into a sort of cornfield mini-dungeon that he has built right into the ground for the sole purpose of trapping and killing her. The scene with the two of them is extremely intense, and really gives you this overwhelming sense of unease, despite already knowing that she’s not going to make it out alive. When she finally decides that it’s best that she gets the hell out of there, she makes a dash for the hatch, kicks Harvey in the grill and at first she thinks she’s home free. Susie sprints home only to slowly realize, she’s not really on Earth anymore, but rather in the ‘in-between’.

That’s about all I can give you without getting really spoilery, something the trailer could’ve taken a hint from. The trailer just assumes we’ve all read the book by Alice Sebold and gives a bit too much of the premise away in my opinion. I guess that’s ok though really because the movie isn’t so much about the murder mystery but rather the effect it has on her family. The real meat to the story is in her inability and her family’s inability to just let go. It’s still got a dash of whodunit, but strictly from Susie’s family’s perspective since we all know who did what already.

My main issue that keeps this from being really great lie within just a couple of things. The first being the art direction and Jackson’s over indulgence as a film director. Yes I know that to a lot of you out there, Peter Jackson can do no wrong. But in Lovely Bones, he’s really just taking a somewhat flimsy adaptation of a book and using it as an excuse to show us one elaborate set piece after another. Don’t get me wrong, there is much to like here and at times it looks fantastic but most of the time it just comes across as very uninspired; very ‘been there, done that’ type of art direction. For a good number of scenes that are shot in the ‘in-between,’ I felt like I was watching a rehashed version of the Robin Williams flick, ‘What Dreams May Come.’ Overly stylish and stylish just to be, well, stylish. You Avatar haters must be screaming at your computer screen right now. How could I possibly fault Jackson for going overboard on style while using a thin plot and still unabashedly love Avatar? Well, as I pointed out earlier, the sets and design just seem recycled from other movies. I fully expect a director like Peter Jackson to push the envelope when it comes to this stuff and unfortunately, it comes across as a bit lazy in parts.

The other thing that I know is going to turn a lot of people off, is the ending and here I cannot avoid spoilers so read at your own risk:

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So why in the hell am I still recommending this? It’s still pretty slick to look at here and features a couple really great performances from Stanley Tucci, Saoirse Ronan, and Susan Sarandon. Tucci is just all kinds of unsettling as the pedophile serial killer who is so methodical and so calculating it’s actually fun to watch him. Ronan also turns in a great performance as Susie and I look forward to seeing her in other things in the future; very talented young actor. Susan Sarandon is an adorable alcoholic grandma,and even though it’s not anything groundbreaking she’s doing here, I just really had a good time watching the scenes she was in.

Mark Wahlberg is serviceable as the grieving father, although not quite what I would’ve wanted out of the role. I don’t think he’s able to really lend enough weight to the role and although you can tell he’s going all out, he just narrowly gets the character. Rachel Weisz however is completely uninspired and while part of it is the disconnect her character is dealing with, most of it is just her being about as boring of an actor as can be.

There is a great movie in here, it’s just buried underneath the surface and you have to work a little harder to get something out of it for yourself. I recommend the movie on the basis that it features some good performances and although I’ve harped on it quite a bit, there are some interesting and cool artistic choices Jackson made. I won’t give those away, you’ll just have to see it for yourself.