What a stinker. I don’t mean to be too blunt, but Life Itself is just not a good movie. I didn’t have my hopes all that high going into it. The IMDB plot description doesn’t exactly paint the picture of a super interesting movie.
As a young New York couple goes from college romance to marriage and the birth of their first child, the unexpected twists of their journey create reverberations that echo over continents and through lifetimes.
But the cast is loaded, with Oscar Isaac, Olivia Wilde, Annette Benning, Mandy Patinkin, Olivia Cooke, Antonio Banderas, and even Samuel L. Jackson for a bit. It’s also written and directed by Dan Fogelman, the creator and sometimes-writer of the hit NBC series This Is Us, a show that I really enjoy. Unfortunately all those positive vibes had little to no payoff.
First off, the narration. Yes, narration. There is a huge amount of narration in this movie. Maybe it’s just me, but unless I’m watching a documentary, I’m looking for minimal narration, preferably none. And yes, the ultimate reason for the narration actually does make sense in the context of the movie, but still. Show, don’t tell. Now the narration on its own wouldn’t be enough to drag it down too much. But the movie also introduces the concept of the “unreliable narrator.” And that idea gets jammed down the viewers’ throats over and over again throughout the movie. It gets mentioned so much that you can’t be sure you can believe what you saw was actually how the events truly played out.
Life Itself is told in five different chapters. Each chapter ultimately connects to each other to make one larger overarching story. It’s a creative enough idea that could work if done correctly. Sadly that wasn’t the case here. The movie ended up feeling like an entire season of This Is Us crammed into one two hour block. You can see how that might be problematic. With so many different characters and stories to fit in, the movie was unable to spend enough time with any of the characters. Each story was too short. You didn’t have enough of a chance to get invested in anybody on screen. Not only that, but a number the characters weren’t exactly written as people you were actively rooting for. To be fair, they weren’t all a lost cause. But some of the more likable characters either die (I think it’s fair that’s not a spoiler, as characters dying in a movie like this should come as a surprise to no one) or have a character arc where they turn into someone you don’t want to root for.
For a movie like this to work, where it’s so emotionally heavy-handed, the audience needs characters to be emotionally invested in. And remember the whole “unreliable narrator” piece? Imagine having that constantly in your head as you see multiple stories told from various perspectives. And with this type of movie, you need a clear story. It’s not like Inception, where an ending left to interpretation fits the overall narrative. It just muddies the water even further.
And on top of all that, the movie simply took itself too seriously. It tried to get to get too deep and philosophical. But it came off as corny and cheesy, and – to put it bluntly – dumb. The main idea of the story is all about how the littlest, seemingly inconsequential events in our lives can shape our future, whether immediate or years down the line. Not exactly an original idea, but it can be fun if put well enough together. Key word there being “if”. Big chunks of dialogue were just terrible. The movie tried to give characters deep, profound moments, but they were ruined by sort of mini-monologues. Many times the moment was clearly profound and moving just by itself. Give the audience some credit. Let them take those moments in and experience them on their own. It’s an R-rated movie, it’s an adult audience. They’re going to be smart enough to realize the impact of the moment by themselves; they don’t need it spoon-fed to them.
As we look forward to October, we should thankfully be seeing some of the real heavy-hitters. It hasn’t been a great stretch recently, but the coming weeks and months are loaded with big releases. Yes, there are sure to be some more misses in there (Nobody’s Fool and Second Act in particular look brutal), but this is the time when many of the serious Oscar contenders come out. So look ahead, plan your movie trips, subscribe to AMC Stubs A List, and let’s wash the bad taste of these recent movies out and get ready for some bangers to end the year.
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