Directed by Danny Boyle
Running time 103 mins
Certificate 15
Contrary to popular belief, Trainspotting is not the best British movie of the 1990s. It's second best, coming in just behind the same production team's debut work on Shallow Grave, but it has just enough real flaws to drag it down from the top spot. That's not to say that it's not head and shoulders above most other British movies, but it loses too much of the grim tone of the original book by concentrating on the amiable Renton and the baby on the ceiling looks shit. But it's been decided that the paean to Scottish junky scum is the greatest movie produced in Britain, so who am I to argue?
So when the backlash set in over the decision by director Danny Boyle and writer John Hodge to make a film in America, I was far from surprised. After all, there's nothing like tearing down an icon, is there? More importantly, can there be any greater treachery for a British director to engage upon than 'going Hollywood'? After all, who would want to give up making twee dreck like Four Weddings And A Funeral and other such cosy sub-Noel Coward tosh, when they could go to America, sign up with a major studio and have the money to actually produce something with production values, rather than yet another bedroom farce?
Only problem is that Hodge and Boyle haven't made an American film: they've made a film set in America, paid for by their perpetual British sponsors, Channel 4 Films. They've kept their quirky vision, their commitment to ingenious film making and their love of actors with more than a degree of indie/art-house cred. Of course they dragged their perennial leading man, the ubiquitous Ewan Mcgregor, along for the ride: but this time, rather than giving him a supporting cast of unknown English indie kids, they've know got the clout to surround him with that bizarre American breed, the credible celebrity. Take Cameron Diaz, who first leapt to fame as, well, let's be blunt, eye candy in The Mask. With the industry notoriety that gave her, she could pick and choose roles: so she chose dark, low-budget satires like The Last Supper, rather than the traditional route of screaming whilst hanging from a window ledge. Similarly, Holly Hunter has gone from Academy accolades for Broadcast News, through unanticipated global applause for the Piano, to 16mm goddess status for Crash. The there's current indie king Stanley Tucci, whose Big Night has replaced movies like Horseman On The Roof as the regular repeat player in arthouse screens around the world.
With a cast this great, it's just a shame that Hodge and Boyle didn't really know what to do with them.
There are two interweaving plots in A Life Less Ordinary. Firstly, two angels in the Cupid department, played by Holly Hunter and Delroy Lindo, have been given an ultimatum by the big guy upstairs: either break their current run of ruining, rather than uniting, lovers, or stay on Earth forever. Their targets are the characters of the second plot, bored millionaire heiress Cameron Diaz and hapless romantic and useless cleaner Ewan McGregor. Either they fall in love, or it's bye-bye Heaven. Only problem is, they have nothing in common, don't know each other and are never likely to have any contact. That is, of course, until the angels decide to ruin Ewan's life: he loses his job, his car, his girlfriend, his apartment and his rag. So he storms into his former boss's office, demanding his job back and accidentally ends up kidnapping his daughter, Diaz.
The twist is that, while McGregor is a bumbling fool, Diaz is definitely the brains of the operation. Only, as she sees it, this affable bumbler is the key to making a few million off daddy. So she takes control of the entire operation, setting the ransom, providing a cover story, writing threatening letters and generally setting McGregor on the right path, with a deal to split the cash at the end of the day. But they've got a deranged millionaire after them , plus a couple of desperate angels and the assembled law enforcement officers of the nation. Can their basic differences be overcome long enough for them to shake off their pursuers and find true love?
Is Bambi going to become king of the forest?
The core idea of A Life Less Ordinary is beautiful and superbly carried by McGregor and Diaz, both of whom are working on being entered into the screen icon book. McGregor's desperate charm plays here as well as the curiously unflappable Renton did in Trainspotting, while Diaz keeps backing up her reputation as a face that the camera truly adores with a proven acting talent that should make her a major star for decades to come. Am I saying a Bogart and Bacall scale of chemistry here? MMMMM, maybe. Give me a couple of films and I'll tell you. Truth be told, I'd like to see a couple more films with this pairing, just as I'd like to see Lindo and Hunter given a couple of hours to play around with their own script. Actually, I'd like to see Lindo and Hunter together when Hunter isn't forced to sport the fright wig she seems to be sporting here, but that's just me.
A Life Less Ordinary falls down not because of the casting, or the acting, but because of the script and the direction. It's a nice idea to do a 1990s version of a divine intervention flick, such as A Matter Of Life And Death, but here is the core problem. The film is built almost solely on cinematic reference. It may be set in the American mid-West for most of its duration, but it's not a real mid-West. It's a mid- West constructed from second hand images, rather than Boyle and Hodge's own opinions and feelings. The central characters are based not upon real life rich bitches and moron migrants, but on their cinematic archetypes. The angels are not drawn from an interest in the nature of Heaven and fate, but from too many viewings of It's A Wonderful Life.
The result feels like a badly faxed version of a better movie, or rather several better movies, produced by those that love the films, but don't seem to understand what they are about. This is a great irony, considering that Hodge and Boyle, in their previous collaborations, have given their films an implicit sense of time and place. They know Edinburgh, its society and culture, but they just don't know America. They do know American film but all that means is that they can make the wide open spaces of the American heartland look like a backlot. Every moment feels like a loving homage to earlier films, but without their sense of purpose. A decision was made to make a 90's version of so many great cinematic traditions - the road movie, the failed heist, the deus ex machina fantasy, the odd couple romance - but it all seems so forced. The angelic intervention line from It's A Wonderful Life has been deliberately rewritten for a generation more aware of the threat of downsizing than reward economics, but it's such a obvious revamping of the myth that it merely seems like a desperate attempt to impress. The idea of doing a fantastic feel-good movie in a decade that has fifty words for encrustation, but none for frolic, seems doomed from the start.
That said, it does seem to mark an obvious division in Boyle and Hodge's relationship. As a director, Boyle's visuals have never been more intriguing, with an entry into the annals of greatest single cinematic moments of all time, as an alarmingly elegant Cameron Diaz, clad only in a shimmering black one-piece swim suit, blows an apple off a servant's head with a silver-plated magnum, just before putting a neat whole in the forehead of a persistent admirer. His ability to photograph actors is so immense that he can take baby-faced Ewan McGregor, give him a suspicious Dennis Lawson haircut and still sell him as a plausible romantic hero.
Unfortunately, Hodge lets the side down by producing his weakest script to date. It's not merely that his lack of an emotional connection to the subject matter makes the film directionless, but it goes contrary to his previous work in that it actually contains a plot. Both Shallow Grave and Trainspotting are character driven, rather than dependent upon narrative form. They both employ an almost Burroughsian cut- up system, ripping between scenes that expose the truly loathsome nature of the characters involved. Yet here the two inter-twined plots of the desperate angels and the antagonistic lovers never seem to gel. The performances of the individual couples are enough to make their scenes watchable, but whenever they are brought together the scripting seems confused and directionless. This is highlighted by the lack of development of the angels, for Hunter's flighty romantic just looks like she's taken a double doze of prozac, while Lindo just gets to slump. There are odd moments when they are thrown a morsel of character development, such as Hunter's gleeful fascination with trashy romance fiction, or Lindo's failed earthly romances when he was alive, but it all seems too little, too late. Yet they're not the only ones to get bad scripting: even though 90% of the plot revolves around him, Mcgregor's character becomes a tabula raza whenever a ludicrous plot point needs to go ignored by the cast. After all, why doesn't he even pass comment when a woman, on whom he had mere hours previously dropped a truck, appears and kidnaps his girlfriend. Even in a fantasy, there's a line between suspension of disbelief and a plot hole, so Boyle is forced to depend upon increasingly stylish and pointless visuals to cover the lack of a cohesive plot.
Hodge basically doesn't know how to construct a resolution: both Trainspotting and Shallow Grave merely come to a conclusion, with Ewan Mcgregor walking off into the distance with his ill-gotten gains. Here instead Mcgregor walks off in fine romance style, with his ill-gotten gains AND the girl AND a big sign saying 'happy every after'. Rather unfortunately, Hodge has had to tack on such a ludicrous left-turn ending, dependent upon the celestial plotline that has been a second-runner in the script all along, just to crow-bar a strangely unsuccessful happy ending. It is as if he'd gone down his usual road of grim, selfish scumbags fucking each other over, then with ten minutes to go had realized that he was supposed to be doing Harvey, not The Long Good Friday.
Bet you're glad they didn't get to do Alien 4 now, aren't you?
RMW