After having success adapting Stephen King novels Gerald’s Game and Doctor Sleep to the big screen, writer and director Mike Flanagan goes to the King well once more with The Life Of Chuck. Besides departing from the horror genre, what sets his third King film in a row apart from the previous two is that the source material this time is a novella, a part of the 2020 compilation book If It Bleeds. But just because the story is shorter doesn’t mean it’s short on big ideas and weighty themes, all of which Flanagan wrings out from the 100 or so pages for his cinematic rendering. With a sprawling cast filled with faces that have popped up throughout Flanagan’s oeuvre, it’s an existential drama that will land as life-affirming and soul-stirring to some but predominantly hit me hollow, despite its best efforts and intentions.
Told in three acts that move in reverse order, The Life Of Chuck opens things on a dire note, introducing us to high school teacher Marty (Chiwetel Ejiofor) trying to hold the attention of his students as the world seems to be falling apart. Constant news of cataclysmic weather events and a worldwide internet outage has folks more divided and scared than ever, prompting Marty to reach out to his ex-wife Felicia (Karen Gillan) for comfort. As they join hands for what seems to be the end of the world, billboards and TV ads crop up everywhere, thanking a man dressed in accounting garb named Chuck (Tom Hiddleston) for “39 great years”. We then flash back to pivotal moments in Chuck’s life, those marked by love, loss and lighting up the dance floor with some electric moves.
Structurally, The Life Of Chuck begs us to ask the questions who is Chuck and how does his story relate to the end of the known universe but Flanagan seems content to let us stew for a while. The film’s first act — well, technically the story’s final act — is both portentous and pretentious, introducing myriad characters who wander around waxing philosophical in staid tones appropriate for dreary mood. I admire Flanagan starting this tale out on such unapologetically apocalyptic terms, rivaling the terror he brewed up with his The Haunting series on Netflix, despite this not overtly being a horror movie. But the unnerving pall cast over this opening chapter is completely at odds with the obstinately chipper demeanor of the two sections that follow.
The middle act of The Life Of Chuck might be the shortest of the three but is no doubt the linchpin of the film’s marketing and showcase for the film’s implicit “dance like no one’s watching” thesis. It also finds Nick Offerman filling us in on character detail via voiceover, initially helpful given the tonal switch-up but gradually doing too much of the heavy lifting that Flanagan should be doing as a storyteller. It turns out Chuck only has 9 months to live due to a brain tumor and while he’s away on an accounting conference, he’s taken to dance in front of a drummer busking on the streets of Boston. Thanks to La La Land and The Eras Tour choreographer Mandy Moore, the moves that Hiddleston puts on are genuinely impressive and mostly help us shake off the seemingly overwhelming sadness present in the segment previous.
That leads us to Act One, subtitled “I Contain Multitudes”, with all the professed profundity that Walt Whitman reference may connote. We learn of Chuck’s tragic loss of his parents at age 7, causing him to live with his grandparents, played by Mark Hamill and Mia Sara. What follows is effectively a montage of opportunities taken and paths unexplored as we see Chuck transition from boyhood into young adulthood. There are indeed some touching moments but the sentimentality is at odds with a narrative that feels conspicuously thin. I assume Flanagan wants his audience to come away with questions like “what does it all mean?” as opposed to “what was the point of that?” Stephen King novella adaptations Stand By Me and The Shawshank Redemption proved that the prolific writer’s shorter stories can work on-screen but The Life Of Chuck can’t quite find its own rhythm.
Score – 2.5/5
New movies coming to theaters this weekend:
28 Years Later, starring Jodie Comer and Aaron Taylor-Johnson, is a post-apocalyptic horror film following a group of survivors from a zombie-like Rage virus as their carry out their lives on a small island until one of the group leaves the island on a mission into the mainland.
Elio, starring Yonas Kibreab and Zoe Saldaña, is a science fiction adventure involving a young space fanatic with an active imagination who finds himself on a cosmic misadventure where he must form new bonds with alien lifeforms and navigate a crisis of intergalactic proportions.
Bride Hard, starring Rebel Wilson and Anna Camp, is a female-led action comedy which finds a mercenary group taking a lavish wedding hostage but meeting their match with a maid of honor who is actually a secret agent ready to defend her best friend’s wedding at any cost.