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The Life of Chuck movie review: Tom Hiddleston-Mike Flanagan create magic with a soulful adaptation of Stephen King's novella
The Life of Chuck is a masterpiece and deserves your attention read more
Star cast: Tom Hiddleston, Chiwetel Ejiofor, Karen Gillan, Jacob Tremblay, and Mark Hamill.
Director: Mike Flanagan
After The Haunting of Hill House, Midnight Mass, Gerald's Game, and Doctor Sleep, director Mike Flanagan has taken a different route by exploring a sentimental story from Stephen King's with The Life of Chuck.
The movie tells the story of a middle-aged accountant named Charles 'Chuck' Krantz (Tom Hiddleston), who leads a modest life and whose childhood was marked by tragedy and loss.
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Divided into three acts having reverse narrative style, The Life of Chuck showcases the lead protagonist's happy memories, sad moments and mundane moments along with the people who play pivotal parts in his life including a teacher, Marty Anderson (Chiwetel Ejiofor), his grandfather Albie Krantz (Mark Hamill), a grade school crush, Cat (Trinty Jo-Li Bliss).
The story has a supernatural element, similar to The Green Mile, as the room where Chuck lives is reportedly haunted, according to his grandfather.
Mike Flanagan's direction looks like flawless poetry where questions like 'What happens next?' or, 'Why does anything have to have a conclusion?' explore the dynamics and essence of life.
In the other two acts, where we see Chuck at different ages, engage in the core emotion of human values, which is beautifully written by the filmmaker.
Talking about the performances, Tom has given one of his finest performances with restraint yet impactful act. He rules the screen with his nuanced and emotional expressions. Mark Hamill and Mia Sara as Chuck's grandparents are great while Ejiofor makes his strong presence with effortless act and charm in his brief role. Benjamin Pajak is simply phenomenal as young Chuck and you can't take your eyes off him.
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On the whole, The Life of Chuck is a masterpiece and deserves your attention.
Rating: 3.5 (out of 5 stars)
The Life of Chuck is playing in cinemas
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Indian Express
a day ago
- Indian Express
The Life of Chuck movie review: Tom Hiddleston's film delivers the warm fuzzies
The Life Of Chuck movie review: Based on a slim Stephen King novella, 'The Life Of Chuck' is a near-faithful cinematic adaptation which aims at giving us the warm fuzzies-in-this-dark-and-dismal-world, and succeeds, more or less. Just like the story, the film starts backwards, where we see Marty (Chiwetel Ejiofor) reconnecting with his ex-wife Felicia (Karen Gillan) even as the world is coming to an end. Mike Flanagan, an old horror-and-Stephen King hand, gives us an apocalypse in small-town America, in which cars are drawing to a stand-still, roads are emptying out, cellphones and laptops have stopped working, and life-saving monitors in hospitals are acting out of whack. One of the most King-ian conceits is in which his characters hit the road in search of self. Marty bumps into an old man who runs the undertaking outfit in town, to have, yes, the wise talk, which touches upon life and all its oddities and finalities. And then he walks to find Felicia in a street whose lights have gone out, and then they wait, for that final blip. The mysterious Chuck, whose life we are being invited to witness, and who shows up here only as a digital hieroglyphic, is met with in flesh only in the second act. Pondering over his dull accountant's life, Chuck (Tom Hiddleston) walks down to the town square where a drummer girl is toying with her sticks. Of course, he breaks out into a dance, drawing in a pretty young woman (Annalise Basso) who's just been dumped, and they swirl and twirl, till the blues are gone, at least for a while. The third act takes us back further in time, where we see Chuck as a boy (Benjamin Pajak) and an adolescent (Jacob Tremblay), living with his grandparents (Mark Hamill and Mia Sara), in an old house with a locked room 'on the cuppola'. That room, grandpa has decreed, is never to be opened, even as grandma teaches little Chuck to shuck and jive so well that he charms not only his dance teacher but an older girl. The two burn up the floor, naturally, on a prom night, and it's where our Chuck learns what it is to have 'multitudes within oneself', looking out at the night sky. Also Read | Housefull 5 movie review: Akshay Kumar leads yet another loud, formulaic farce It's just the kind of stuff that can turn hokey and bumper sticker-y, and there are moments that threaten to flatten the sentiment, especially under the film's deliberate voiceover that sounds like a too-pleased-with-his-voice radio-jockey explaining something so simple that it never really needed an explanation in the first place. Some threads aren't teased out enough, the chief one being that locked room, which could have given us a little more of a jolt than the film manages. But having read the story and liked it (huge King fan here), I think I was primed to enjoy this film, which dives into its wares minus any pretense, and a bunch of effective acts, especially Ejiofor as a man who circles back to his one true love, Flanagan regular Hamill with a great scene in which he explains the magic of numbers, Sara whom you might remember from 'Ferris Bueller's Day Off', and who really lights up the screen here, Pajak as the youngest Tom who is such a natural twinkle-toes, and, yes, Hiddleston himself, who shows off some really cool moves. The Life Of Chuck movie cast: Tom Hiddleston, Chiwetel Ejiofor, Benjamin Pajak, Jacob Tremblay, Mark Hamill, Karen Gillan, Annalise Basso, Mia Sara The Life Of Chuck movie director: Mike Flanagan The Life Of Chuck movie rating: Three stars
The Hindu
a day ago
- The Hindu
‘The Life of Chuck' movie review: Tom Hiddleston dances into our hearts to the end of the world
With a movie featuring Mike Flanagan — the man behind horror hits like The Haunting of Hill House, Midnight Mass, and The Fall of the House of Usher — and Stephen King, the master of the macabre, you would be forgiven for expecting a one-way ticket to the seventh circle of hell. Incidentally, Flanagan helmed the underwhelming King sequel to The Shining, Doctor Sleep. The Life of Chuck (English) Director: Mike Flanagan Starring: Tom Hiddleston, Chiwetel Ejiofor, Karen Gillan, Jacob Tremblay, Mark Hamill Runtime: 110 minutes Storyline: As the world falls apart, a man's life comes to an end, forging poignant connections both big and small The Life of Chuck, adapted from King's novella, is an altogether different beast. Though set at the end of the world — with earthquakes, floods, volcanoes erupting in Germany, and even the internet going down — The Life of Chuck is a marvellous meditation on memory, mortality and the importance of legacy. Like the novella, the story is told in three parts retroactively, starting with Act 3, which sees the end of the world through the eyes of a teacher, Marty Anderson (Chiwetel Ejiofor). As things fall apart, Marty sees billboards appearing with the words, '39 Great Years! Thanks, Chuck.' His ex-wife, Felicia (Karen Gillan), is a nurse and she hears an ad on the radio thanking Chuck for 39 great years. Marty tells his neighbour, Chuck seems to be the 'Oz of the Apocalypse' and 'Our last meme.' Act 2 features a drummer (Taylor Gordon), who sets up on a sunny street corner. When she sees a businessman (Tom Hiddleston) walk down the street, she strikes a groove and the man inexplicably drops his briefcase and starts dancing. Lauren (Annalise Basso), who was dumped by a boyfriend via text, is walking down the street in a hurt fury when she joins the impromptu performance much to the delight of the gathered crowd. In Act 1, we see a young Chuck (Jacob Tremblay, Benjamin Pajak, Cody Flanagan) who comes to stay with his paternal grandparents, Albie (Mark Hamill) and Sarah (Mia Sara), after he loses his parents in a car crash. His grandparents' house is a lovely Victorian and Chuck has a free run of it except for the cupola which is always kept locked. Sarah introduces Chuck to the joys of dancing, which is developed further in school by the dance teacher, Miss Rohrbacher (Samantha Sloyan). Chuck's 'hippy dippy' English teacher, Miss Richards (Kate Siegel), reveals Walt Whitman's truth of 'I contain multitudes' from his 'Song of Myself.' Fun fact: 'I contain multitudes' is the opening track of Bob Dylan's 39th studio album, Rough and Rowdy Ways. ALSO READ:'Karate Kid: Legends' movie review: Jackie Chan and Ben Wang star in sweet, '80s-style martial arts drama Despite its metaphysical underpinnings, The Life of Chuck is a joyful experience. While the acting is superb, from Ejiofor, Hamill and Jacob Tremblay, as the funeral director to Hiddleston, who anchors the film with a whimsical performance, it is the dancing that adds that extra zing to the film. Hiddleston, Basso and Gordon set the screen ablaze with the blindingly sweet moves as do the young actors. Pajak and Cody Flanagan (director Mike Flanagan and Kate Siegel's son) learning dancing from grandma and the dance teacher at school and the dance at the gym are so graceful and tender, bringing an unexpected lump to your throat, even as you grin widely. It is a gentle reminder of the attention we owe to the little things in life. The Life of Chuck is currently running in theatres
Hindustan Times
a day ago
- Hindustan Times
Author Stephen King, ahead of The Life of Chuck film's release: I'm a chipper guy, I get rid of all dark stuff in books
So vividly drawn is writer Stephen King's fiction that it has already been the basis for over 50 feature films. For half a century, since Brian De Palma's 1976 film Carrie, Hollywood has turned, and turned again, to King's books for their richness of character, nightmare, and sheer entertainment. As the adaptation of his 2020 doomsday novella gears up for a cinematic release, the author says, 'In The Life of Chuck, we understand that this guy's life is cut short, but that doesn't mean he doesn't experience joy... Existential dread and grief and things are part of the human experience, but so is joy.' The 77-year-old has penned around 80 books, which have often been fodder for the movies and the author is a self-confessed moviegoer. 'I love anything from The 400 Blows (1959) to something with that guy Jason Statham,' King says, speaking by phone from his home in Maine (United States). He adds, 'The worst movie I ever saw was still a great way to spend an afternoon. The only movie I ever walked out on was Transformers (2007). At a certain point I said, 'This is just ridiculous'.' Adding how he's always happy writing, King adds, 'I'm a very chipper guy because I get rid of all that dark stuff in the books.' Dark stuff, such as the kind of climate change disaster found in The Life of Chuck, which King says often dominates his anxieties. 'We're creeping up little by little on being the one country who does not acknowledge it's a real problem with carbon in the atmosphere. That's crazy. Certain right-wing politicians can talk all they want about how we're saving the world for our grandchildren. They don't care about that. They care about money,' he opines.
