Written by: Mike Flanagan
Starring: Tom Hiddleston, Chiwetel Ejiofor, Karen Gillan, Mia Sara, Carl Lumbly
Rating: [2/5]
Stories aspiring to inspire always have the best of intentions, as they portray a life-affirming tale displaying the beauty of everything transpiring around us. Films with this intent even when mishandled bring some value, but then we have films like The Life of Chuck, which tries to continually hit its audience over the head with its attempt at sincerity that ii ultimately fails. A surprising conclusion given all the elements involved would indicate this would succeed.
Split into 3 acts, Chuck (Tom Hiddleston) attends a banking conference where he walks by a drummer and instinctually begins to dance. A moment he did not know would carry so much significance in his life, as the narrative shows his past and his future.
It brings me absolutely no pleasure in writing negatively about a Mike Flanagan film, as the man continually produces excellent films. He has developed this consistency that has showed no one else can adapt Stephen King material quite like him. Therefore, it raises the question of what went wrong in adapting this particular story that has the bones of something incredibly inspiring. Ultimately, it all falls apart by failing the rule of filmmaking of show-don’t-tell.
Life of Chuck has some of the worst narration I have ever experienced in a film, not because Nick Offerman turned in a bad performance but the way it continually bludgeons the audience with explaining every little detail of the story and refusing to just let the story play out. Narration in film serve a key purpose and when done effectively, as done in great films this very year, can genuinely contribute, but this was something else completely. I cannot take credit for this particular criticism, but I have to borrow it where someone mentioned that Flanagan’s affection for Stephen King’s writing has reached a point where he will just copy and paste from the stories themselves as the narration. This fully captures the frustration with this particular storytelling device, and it made the film a grating experience where I could not focus on receiving the inspiration in the text when it continually gets blurted at me.
Additionally, the structure of this feature did it no favors whatsoever given that we follow the life of Chuck as the title indicates, but in three different acts. However, these three acts happen in such different times in Chuck’s life, with little to no meaningful connective tissue. Whatever connectivity exists meant to strike a chord comes across incredibly unearned. Take, for example, the distinct hand motion Chuck does when he dances in the second act, where at the moment it bears no significance until the third act when we jump into his childhood. We see an important person did that when they danced, but all of it happens without any real emphasis that it all feels pointless. It raises the question of if it made sense to tell this story in the linear order it did, where it goes backwards in Chuck’s life. While not having read the story this film adapts, it would make much more sense to tell this story starting from his youth if the goal is to build upon his experiences to show how he contains multitudes.
When the narration does not bombard us with explaining how Chuck learned how to tie his shoes, this feature does contain some singularly good moments. In my estimation this all occurs in the third act in his youth where many more layers get expounded upon that become foundational to the character. Only in this particular segment does Chuck feel like an actual character with real emotions, rather than this conduit made to make the audience feel something when nothing gets earned. A movie just on that third act would have made for something of quality, but unfortunately we had the first two-thirds that pretty much spoil the apple cart and ultimately drags this all the way down.
Mike Flanagan has never failed me until The Life of Chuck, and I can only hope this exists as merely a small blip in his career. I will choose to believe that given his track record, but this film is nothing short of a train wreck. One of the most naked intents of making audiences feel emotions for a character, so incredibly unearned that it developed negative emotions within me somehow. The number of times we get told how Chuck maintains multitudes instead of showing it pretty sums it all up.
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