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A Life Less Ordinary

1997, Movie, R, 104 mins

A Life Less Ordinary: Review

LIFE LESS ORDINARY, A
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The edgy, clear-sighted vision that propelled SHALLOW GRAVE and TRAINSPOTTING to cult status blurs in Scottish writing-producing-directing team John Hodge, Andrew MacDonald and Danny Boyle's first American production. Their dark, self-referential romantic comedy opens in heaven, where two underachieving angels (Delroy Lindo and Holly Hunter) are assigned to spark romance between the profoundly mismatched Celine and Robert (Cameron Diaz and Ewan McGregor): Failure, hints stern supervisor Gabriel (Dan Hedaya), is not an option. That Celine is a snotty, willful, spoiled-rotten heiress and Robert a sad-sack janitor recently fired by her skinflint dad (Ian Holm) is the least of the obstacles they face. The angels engineer a kidnapping, casting Celine in the role of Robert's feisty hostage, then meddle relentlessly in hopes that escalating peril will light the fire of true love. Strenuously eccentric and wildly uneven, the rocky narrative road that leads Celine and Robert to bliss is littered with wacky happenstance, fantasy set-pieces and bloody bodies: It's seldom boring and always beautifully photographed, but it's also considerably less than satisfying, perhaps because its internal logic never comes into focus. Holly Hunter's gratingly mannered performance -- she's sort of a celestial Bonnie Parker, with a soul of pure pulp -- stops the movie dead at regular intervals, and the procession of redneck karaoke singers, barking mountain men and pervy dentists is wearying rather than bracingly off-kilter. leave a comment --Maitland McDonagh
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