A Life Less Ordinary
with Cameron Diaz, Ewan McGregor, Holly Hunter
Directed by Danny Boyle
Written by John Hodge
by William Ham & Adam Haynes
The Shallow Grave/Trainspotting quartet of writer John Hodge, producer Andrew MacDonald, director Danny Boyle and actor Ewan McGregor have attempted to consolidate the runaway success of their first two projects with their first major-budget/major-studio film, the romantic comedy A Life Less Ordinary. As their take on the genre is predictably different from the established norm (for good or ill), it seemed appropriate that our review of the picture would be equally unusual. So our resident film mavens, William Ham and Adam Haynes, and their partner, the long-suffering Radio Shack microcassette recorder known only as “Babs,” sat down one recent afternoon and tried to puzzle out just what the hell happened. None of the principals are at all sure whether cine-crit satori has been attained, but what the hell, it fills a page.
William: Okay, let’s start with our general impressions of A Life Less Ordinary.
Adam: Hmmm… well, after we saw it, we thought it was okay, but having sat on it for three or four days, I gotta say I’m impressed with it less and less.
William: I agree. We laughed pretty constantly throughout the picture, but in the cold light of day, it didn’t hold together. Now, we’ve seen Ewan McGregor in Shallow Grave, Trainspotting, The Pillow Book…
Adam: I remember his penis in The Pillow Book. Nothing else sticks with me from that.
William: Yes, the Harvey Keitel school of acting… Would you not agree that this was the worst haircut Ewan’s had to date?
Adam: Absolutely. But if he didn’t have such bad hair, I would have liked it even less. Really, this should have been just a madcap, goofy, directed-by-Carl-Reiner sort of comedy, only whenever they tried to do anything slick or different with it, they had to throw in lots of gratuitous violence, bad hair, and bad skin just to keep it interesting. And bad singing, too.
William: Right. This is the second Cameron Diaz film this year with a karaoke scene in it, proving that she can’t sing.
Adam: She sang in The Mask.
William: Yeah, but I imagine it was dubbed.
Adam: Didn’t Glenn Close dub her voice in for that one? Or was it Andie MacDowell?
William: Glenn Close dubbed the voice of Andie MacDowell and then Cameron Diaz’ face was morphed over it.
Adam: But the thing about Cameron Diaz is that every time I see her, I think she looks like Amanda Donahoe. Which is why I keep saying she should be in a lesbian vampire movie, which probably will happen, since she seems to be making the rounds of all the sleazy independent filmmakers.
William: She was in Feeling Minnesota, which also had Delroy Lindo in it, now that I think of it. Which I don’t often like to, ’cause it was so terrible.
Adam: I must say that this was at least better than Feeling Minnesota…
William: Glen or Glenda? was better than Feeling Minnesota.
Adam: …the music was better, the set-ups and the camera work were better, the whole thing went down much easier even though nobody was very interesting in it. Other than Ewan’s hair.
William: Some of the supporting characters were okay.
Adam: But that’s the problem, see. You have these two basically boring lead characters essentially getting moved around for the express purpose of running into these more interesting supporting characters. That’s the classic mistake they warn you against in film school.
William: Like Stanley Tucci’s mad dentist, Tony Shalhoub’s wise bartender, Ian Holm’s… hey, I just realized they pretty much grafted the entire cast of Big Night onto this movie!
Adam: Yeah, see, if the whole movie had been about a mad dentist and two guardian angels, it probably could’ve rivaled the horrible Wings of Desire remake that Nicolas Cage is doing…
William: And another thing I just have to add is that Holly Hunter is just getting more and more perverse with every movie she does. After Crash and now this, she just wants these bizarre-sensuality-and-car-wreck parts now.
Adam: Holly Hunter is great, but seeing her and Harvey Keitel naked in The Piano made me want to retch. I think the people that praised it were confusing the trauma they felt with greatness.
William: Even so, you haven’t seen that kind of rampaging sexuality since she leapt on Nicolas Cage in Raising Arizona. Hmmm…Raising Arizona,Feeling Minnesota…
Adam: I can say that, if anything, at least this movie wasn’t boring. But I got the feeling that these people had all this studio money at their disposal and just said “We’re gonna have fun with it,” which is dangerous – when good directors usually have fun with something they make movies like Get on the Bus, but with bad directors… well, when I think of bad directors, I always come back to Oliver Stone. I imagine that when he does a movie that he really fucked up on and realizes it, that’s when he goes to the press and says, “Everyone’s gonna crucify me on this just ’cause we had so much fun making it.” (laughs)
William: And it’s all comprised of elements that have been used so much better elsewhere. The whole guardian angel thing makes me think of…
Adam: It’s a Wonderful Life?
William: No, Two of a Kind with John Travolta and Olivia Newton-John.
Adam: Oh, yeah! I would much rather have seen that!
William: At least they knew it was trash when they made it. No pretensions there.
Adam: And they weren’t trying to be hip, or maybe they were and they just failed miserably.
William: The bureaucratic afterlife thing reminded me of Defending Your Life, which brings up the whole matter of the ending of the picture.
Adam: I think we spoke of this. The Albert Brooks Syndrome.
William: Right – his films are wonderful, but they never end well. It’s like he realized, “Oh, shit, I’m up to page 110 in the screenplay! I’d better wrap it up fast!”
Adam: “We’ll pull away from the trailer park and I’ll go back to New York and eat shit!” (laughs)
William: And finally, the claymation stuff during the credits is a far inferior version of the ending of Brain Donors.
Adam: I don’t know that one.
William: That’s Pat Proft’s updated Night at the Opera with John Turturro in the Groucho role.
Adam: That sounds more entertaining.
William: And nobody has shafts of light bursting through their chests, either. Though it would have made more sense there if they did.
