''A Life Less Ordinary'' is a 1997 British romantic

black comedy Black comedy, also known as black humor, bleak comedy, dark comedy, dark humor, gallows humor or morbid humor, is a style of comedy that makes light of subject matter that is generally considered taboo, particularly subjects that are normally ...

film directed by Danny Boyle, written by John Hodge, and starring Ewan McGregor, Cameron Diaz, Holly Hunter, Delroy Lindo,

Ian Holm Sir Ian Holm Cuthbert (12 September 1931 – 19 June 2020) was an English actor. After graduating from RADA (Royal Academy of Dramatic Art) and beginning his career on the British stage as a member of the Royal Shakespeare Company, he became a ...

and Dan Hedaya. The plot follows two angels (Hunter and Lindo) who are sent to Earth to help make a disgruntled kidnapper (McGregor) and his hostage (Diaz) fall in love. The film received mixed reviews and was unsuccessful at the box office, only grossing $14.6 million worldwide against its $12 million budget.

Plot

Heaven Heaven, or the Heavens, is a common Religious cosmology, religious cosmological or supernatural place where beings such as deity, deities, angels, souls, saints, or Veneration of the dead, venerated ancestors are said to originate, be throne, ...

angel An angel is a spiritual (without a physical body), heavenly, or supernatural being, usually humanoid with bird-like wings, often depicted as a messenger or intermediary between God (the transcendent) and humanity (the profane) in variou ...

s are tasked with ensuring that mortals on Earth find love. The "Captain",

Gabriel In the Abrahamic religions (Judaism, Christianity, Islam), Gabriel ( ) is an archangel with the power to announce God's will to mankind, as the messenger of God. He is mentioned in the Hebrew Bible, the New Testament and the Quran. Many Chris ...

, is upset at reviewing the file of angel partners O'Reilly and Jackson, all of whose recent cases have ended in divorce or misery. He introduces a radical new incentive: if their next pair does not fall, and stay, in love (which Gabriel admits is a tough case), O'Reilly and Jackson must stay on earth forever. Celine Naville is the spoiled twenty-something daughter of a wealthy businessman, and Robert Lewis is a

janitor A cleaner, cleanser or cleaning operative is a type of Industry (economics), industrial or domestic worker who is tasked with cleaning a space. A janitor (Scotland, United States and Canada), also known as a custodian, Facility Operator, porter ...

employed in her father's company. After being fired and replaced by a robot, Robert drowns his sorrows at a local bar. His girlfriend Lily later tells him she is leaving him for her aerobics instructor. Believing that shared peril will bring them together, O'Reilly and Jackson pose as collection agents to repossess Robert's things and evict him from his apartment. Robert storms into Mr. Naville's office and, after wrestling a gun from a security guard, he decides to kidnap Celine. He drives her to a remote cabin in the California woods but, even though she easily slips her restraints, she decides to stick around for the adventure and for revenge against her father, suggesting that they extort a huge ransom. The angels pose as bounty hunters and contract with Mr Naville to retrieve Celine and kill Robert. Robert's first attempt to collect the ransom fails, but Celine encourages him. They go out to a bar, get drunk and sleep together. Afterwards, Robert reveals to Celine his recurring dream where they are both on a game show and she must shoot him through the heart with an arrow. Robert makes a second demand for the ransom, with a letter written in Celine's blood. Mr Naville gives the angels the money, and they go to meet Robert in the forest. To their disappointment, he appears willing to let Celine go in exchange for the money before O'Reilly stops his getaway. While O'Reilly and Celine wait by their car, Jackson takes Robert into the woods to execute him. Before he can, Celine decks O'Reilly, runs into the woods, and knocks Jackson out with a shovel. As Robert and Celine drive away, O'Reilly attacks them. To escape, Robert and Celine jump from the car, which careens off a cliff, with the money still inside. Since they are short of money, Celine decides to rob a bank. The robbery goes smoothly until a security guard shoots at her. Robert pushes her out of the way, taking a bullet in the thigh. Celine hurriedly drives him back to the city to be operated on by Elliott, a dentist who had previously proposed marriage to her. A little later, when Robert regains consciousness, he is appalled to see Celine playing a sexual role-playing game with Elliott. A fight breaks out, and Robert knocks Elliot unconscious. As they drive away, Celine explains that she agreed to Elliot's request only so that he would help Robert. Hurt, Robert gets out of the car and walks away. To get them back together, Jackson writes a love poem in Robert's handwriting and sends it to Celine. Overcome, she runs back to Robert and says he has won her heart. The angels' plan seems to work until Robert says he did not write it. Humiliated, Celine runs out again. Robert runs after her, but is too late: the angels, believing they failed, decide to make their Earth-bound lives bearable by kidnapping Celine for ransom. Robert tracks Celine to their hideout. He knocks O'Reilly down and, struggling with Jackson, tells Celine he loves her. The door is kicked down by Naville's butler, Mayhew, who shoots the two angels in the head. Leaving Celine locked in the trunk, Naville and Mayhew drive Robert and the two angels' bodies to the cabin, planning to fake a murder-suicide. In Heaven, Gabriel's secretary begs him to intervene. Gabriel eventually complies and phones God. A neighbor releases Celine from the trunk and, taking his gun, she runs to the cabin and confronts her father, while Mayhew holds Robert at gunpoint. Celine shoots Mayhew in the shoulder, the bullet somehow passing through Robert's heart en route but leaving him unharmed, just as he had dreamed. O'Reilly and Jackson later come back to life. After Gabriel congratulates them on a successful case, the two angels hold hands as they prepare to return home, suggesting they have also found love together. Robert and Celine retrieve the suitcase full of money, and with it, they settle in a castle in

Scotland Scotland is a Countries of the United Kingdom, country that is part of the United Kingdom. It contains nearly one-third of the United Kingdom's land area, consisting of the northern part of the island of Great Britain and more than 790 adjac ...

, shown in the animated end credits.

Cast

* Ewan McGregor as Robert Lewis * Cameron Diaz as Celine Naville * Holly Hunter as O'Reilly * Delroy Lindo as Jackson *

as Naville * Dan Hedaya as

* Stanley Tucci as Elliot Zweikel *

Maury Chaykin Maury Alan Chaykin (July 27, 1949 – July 27, 2010) was an American-Canadian actor. Described as "one of the most recognizable faces in Canadian cinema," he was best known for his portrayal of Rex Stout's detective Nero Wolfe on the televi ...

as Tod Johnson *

Tony Shalhoub Anthony Marc Shalhoub ( ; ; born October 9, 1953) is an American actor. He is known for a variety of roles ranging from comedic to dramatic on stage and screen. He has received several accolades including five Emmy Awards, a Golden Globe Award, s ...

as Al * K.K. Dodds as Lily * Ian McNeice as Mayhew * Christopher Gorham as Walt * Timothy Olyphant as Hiker

Production

Most of the film was shot in

Utah Utah is a landlocked state in the Mountain states, Mountain West subregion of the Western United States. It is one of the Four Corners states, sharing a border with Arizona, Colorado, and New Mexico. It also borders Wyoming to the northea ...

, which was chosen for its diverse locations. The scenes at the Naville mansion were filmed in

Malibu, California Malibu ( ; ; ) is a beach city in the Santa Monica Mountains region of Los Angeles County, California, about west of downtown Los Angeles. It is known for its Mediterranean climate, its strip of beaches stretching along the Pacific Ocean coa ...

Reception

Critical response

''A Life Less Ordinary'' has received mixed reviews from film critics.

Rotten Tomatoes Rotten Tomatoes is an American review aggregator, review-aggregation website for film and television. The company was launched in August 1998 by three undergraduate students at the University of California, Berkeley: Senh Duong, Patrick Y. Lee ...

gives the film a score of 41% based on 37 reviews, with an average score of 5.7/10. The site's critical consensus states "''A Life Less Ordinary'' has an intriguing cast and stylish work from director Danny Boyle, but they're not enough to overcome the story's fatally misjudged tonal mishmash."

Metacritic Metacritic is an American website that aggregates reviews of films, television shows, music albums, video games, and formerly books. For each product, the scores from each review are averaged (a weighted average). Metacritic was created ...

, which assigns a weighted average score in the 0–100 range based on reviews from mainstream critics, calculated an average score of 37% for the film, based on reviews from 22 critics.

Andrew Johnson Andrew Johnson (December 29, 1808July 31, 1875) was the 17th president of the United States, serving from 1865 to 1869. The 16th vice president, he assumed the presidency following the assassination of Abraham Lincoln. Johnson was a South ...

wrote in

Time Out New York ''Time Out'' is a global magazine published by Time Out Group. ''Time Out'' started as a London-only publication in 1968 and has expanded its editorial recommendations to 333 cities in 59 countries worldwide. In 2012, the London edition became ...

, "The outsiders' take on America that Boyle and screenwriter John Hodge bring to the film adds to its humour, as do subtle homages to other movies (including '' The Road Warrior'', '' Reservoir Dogs'' and '' Raiders of the Lost Ark''). Parts of ''Life'' lean toward the saccharine, and the ending could be stronger, but none of that prevents it from being one of the years' most charming date movies."

Roger Ebert Roger Joseph Ebert ( ; June 18, 1942 – April 4, 2013) was an American Film criticism, film critic, film historian, journalist, essayist, screenwriter and author. He wrote for the ''Chicago Sun-Times'' from 1967 until his death in 2013. Eber ...

gave ''A Life Less Ordinary'' 2 out of 4 stars. He described the film as a "movie that never convinces us that it needed to be made." He goes on to call the plot a mess and states that it "expends enormous energy to tell a story that is tedious and contrived."

Box-office performance

The film opened up in theatres on 24 October 1997. During its opening weekend, the film ranked 9th overall by pulling in only $2,007,279. By the end of its run, the film grossed a total of $4,366,722 in the United States. Internationally, the film made $10,345,675 for a worldwide total of $14,633,270.

Adaptations

The film was serialised as a full-length

comic strip A comic strip is a Comics, sequence of cartoons, arranged in interrelated panels to display brief humor or form a narrative, often Serial (literature), serialized, with text in Speech balloon, balloons and Glossary of comics terminology#Captio ...

within leading British comic magazine '' 2000 AD,'' adapted by then-editor David Bishop and drawn by Steve Yeowell. Screenwriter John Hodge also wrote a novelisation of the film that was published by Penguin Books (). Scenes from the film were used in the music video for Beck's song " Deadweight", directed by Michel Gondry; the music video for Ash's song " A Life Less Ordinary", directed by Hammer & Tongs; and the song " Don't Leave" by

Faithless Faithless are an English dance music Band (rock and pop), band that formed in 1995, with its core original members being Rollo Armstrong, Rollo, Sister Bliss and Maxi Jazz. During the band's initial period of success, Sister Bliss and Maxi Ja ...

Soundtrack

" Deadweight", a single by

Beck Beck David Hansen (born Bek David Campbell; July 8, 1970), known mononymously as Beck, is an American musician, singer, songwriter, and record producer. He rose to fame in the early 1990s with his Experimental music, experimental and Lo-fi mus ...

, was nominated for Best Song from a Movie at the 1998 MTV Movie Awards.

References

External links

* *
A Life Less Ordinary
' at

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Life Less Ordinary, A 1997 films 1997 black comedy films 1990s romantic fantasy films 1997 romantic comedy films American romantic comedy films British romantic comedy films British romantic fantasy films Film4 Productions films Films about kidnapping in the United States Films about angels Films adapted into comics Films directed by Danny Boyle Films produced by Andrew Macdonald Films scored by David Arnold Films shot in Salt Lake City Films shot in Utah American romantic fantasy films Films with screenplays by John Hodge 20th Century Fox films 1990s English-language films 1990s American films 1990s British films English-language black comedy films English-language romantic comedy films English-language romantic fantasy films PolyGram Filmed Entertainment films