The Life of Chuck movie review: Tom Hiddleston's film delivers the warm fuzzies

Indian Express

a day ago

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.
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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