One star. Rated R, for profanity, dramatic intensity, relentless heartbreak and brief drug use
By Derrick Bang
This is the most relentlessly, manipulatively, cruelly depressing film I’ve ever had the displeasure to endure.
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| Abby (Olivia Wilde) and Will (Oscar Isaac) linger in bed with their beloved little pooch, convinced that every morning — every day — will be as giddily, lovingly happy as this one. Obviously, they haven't read the next page in this unspeakable film's script. |
Writer/director Dan Fogelman obviously had some serious demons to exorcise, but that’s no excuse; he could have poured his heart into a journal, and spared the rest of us this soul-numbing slog of gloom and despair.
It’s also counter to what we’ve come to expect from the writer who brought us droll, sharply observed ensemble dramedies such as Crazy Stupid Love, Danny Collins (which he also directed) and the ongoing TV series This Is Us, not to mention Tangled, his clever animated take on the fairy tale Rapunzel. This has been a go-to guy for guaranteed entertainment for more than a decade.
What the hell happened?
And what in the world made Amazon Studios think people would want to watch this?
As becomes clear immediately, Life Itself also suffers from obnoxiously contrived structural and presentation tics, any one of which seasoned filmgoers generally recognize as a signal of Bad Things To Come: 1) tedious, said-bookism narration; 2) cutesy “chapter titles”; and 3) far too much time spent in a psychiatrist’s office.
At times, this is a deliberate deconstruction of cinema’s traditional storytelling process, in service of a running subtext concerning a fictional device known as the “unreliable narrator.” Hitchcock employs this quite notoriously in Stage Fright, when the “flashbacks” related by Richard Todd’s character turn out to be lies. More recently, The Usual Suspects tricked us grandly with an unreliable narrator.
But Fogelman’s use of this gimmick isn’t clever; it’s simply mean-spirited, as if he derives some sort of sadistic pleasure from shattering not only our expectations, but the investment we have in a blossoming series of captivating characters. By the end of the first “chapter,” the message becomes clear: Neither Fogelman, nor this film, can — or should — be trusted.
His apparent point: Life, itself, is the ultimate unreliable narrator, because just when things seem to be going wonderfully, true happiness can be shattered by tragedy.
Okay, fine … but must that happen over, and over, and over again, in the same dreary slice of rancid cinematic pie?
