Movie review: 'Life of Chuck' affirms joy in dark times
1 of 5 | Tom Hiddleston and Annalise Basso dance in "The Life of Chuck," in theaters Friday. Photo courtesy of Neon
LOS ANGELES, June 2 (UPI) -- The Life of Chuck, in theaters Friday, is a surreal and beautiful portrait of a life well lived.
The film, adapted by Mike Flanagan from the Stephen King novella, portrays the life of Charles Krantz (Tom Hiddleston) in three chapters in reverse order. Near the end of his life, Charles appears on billboards that read "39 Great Years! Thanks Chuck."
Schoolteacher Marty Anderson (Chiwetel Ejiofor) sees those ads and wonders who Charles is and what happened in those 39 years. The ads escalate before Charles actually appears; not since Omar Sharif in Lawrence of Arabia has a movie character made such a grand entrance.
For a while, Charles becomes a mysterious figure in a world in crisis. But the film focuses on how regular people cope with their limited knowledge of world events.
Marty's ex-wife, Felicia Gordon (Karen Gillan) is a nurse trying to hold a hospital down and reaches out to reconnect with her ex-husband. Marty also makes friends with a stranger, Sam Yabrough (Carl Lumbly), walking from place to place.
What people talk about during political and environmental upheaval is poignant. They wonder whether the chaos has led to more marriages or divorces, because they're considering if more people pursue love or give up on commitments. Other people are just too dazed to have a deep conversation.
Earlier in Charles' life, on a lunch break on a business trip, he stopped for street drummer Taylor Frank (The Pocket Queen) and started dancing. Though the choreography is enhanced by dance legend Mandy Moore, the scene represents a sincere moment between strangers.
The pair are both doing what comes naturally and they happen to complement each other. They need not speak for Taylor to guide Charles, or for Charles to inspire a new beat.
As a child, young Charles (Cody Flanagan, Benjamin Pajak and Jacob Tremblay) goes to live with his grandparents (Mark Hamill, Mia Sara) after his parents die in an automobile accident. As an adult, he's already thought about his grandmother dancing in the kitchen, giving context in this segment.
By sixth grade, Charles is old enough to start asking questions. He's experienced the fragility of mortality earlier than most and is inevitably going to experience more before his own. He is living with an elderly couple, and even if he wasn't, death touches all of our lives.
There are several motifs that recur in each chapter: Dancing, the cosmic calendar representing all of existence as if it were months of the year, Walt Whitman poems and a locked room upstairs all appear in some way.
These give specificity to patterns that recur at various stages of life. Some of Charles' adult motivations are explained in childhood, but other feelings are not impacted so linearly.
There is a supernatural element to the story, but it is subtle and does not overshadow the film's celebration of real life. The mysterious aspect is unveiled at the end, more as a garnish to the human story than a twist ending.
Although Charles' life has specific circumstances, they are universal enough that the film serves as a Rorschach test for any viewer. Different aspects of The Life of Chuck will resonate with different people, and the film potentially gives peace and healing, if not definitive answers.
Fred Topel, who attended film school at Ithaca College, is a UPI entertainment writer based in Los Angeles. He has been a professional film critic since 1999, a Rotten Tomatoes critic since 2001, and a member of the Television Critics Association since 2012 and the Critics Choice Association since 2023. Read more of his work in Entertainment.
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(Left to right) Stephen King and Mike Flanagan at the premiere of 'The Life of Chuck' during the ... More 2024 Toronto International Film Festival in Toronto, Ontario. Filmmaker Mike Flanagan's creative bond with Stephen King feels like destiny. His latest adaptation of the literary master's work is The Life of Chuck, his third, but it was never a sure thing. "I received a manuscript before it was published," he explains. "I think a whole bunch of filmmakers did because they send it out to see who wants to grab it. I read it in April 2020, a month into the lockdown, and at a time when I was overwhelmed with anxiety and dread and felt like the world was ending. It hit too close to home for me. Initially, I didn't think I could finish reading it, but I did finish it, and by the end, I was crying with happiness, optimism, and joy, and I was so bowled over by it." "I emailed Steve that afternoon, and I said, 'I want to raise my hand on this one. I think it's gorgeous. It's one of my favorite things you've written in a very long time. If I got to do this, it might be the best film I'll ever make, so I'm here for it.' I had just gotten the rights to The Dark Tower, and we were like, 'Let's focus on that.' Steve doesn't like you to have more than one thing, you know, because it means one thing isn't moving, which I get. However, he said, 'I'll try to keep it warm for you. Let's see where we end up.' It would take a couple more years before I went back and said, 'The Dark Tower is on its own timeline. It's all moving, but at its own pace, so I have time to do this. I would love to do it.' He said, Oh, in that case, 'Yeah, let's do it.'" After premiering to rave reviews at the Toronto International Film Festival in September 2024, where it won the People's Choice Award, it lands in select theaters on Friday, June 6, 2025, before expanding nationwide on Friday, June 13, 2025. The Life of Chuck follows Charles "Chuck" Krantz, played by Tom Hiddleston, whose life is chronicled in reverse-chronological order and appears to be having an impact on the world and universe around him. Many filmmakers only get one chance at a Stephen King adaptation, but Flanagan has had a few opportunities, often with great effect, including the sequel to The Shining, Doctor Sleep, and Gerald's Game. He has an alchemy with the author's work, but who is who's muse? "For me to make an assertion like that, I've got to laugh because Mick Garris is the current leader as far as the number of adaptations," Flanagan says with a chuckle. Garris' work includes films such as Sleepwalkers and Riding the Bullet, as well as TV projects like The Stand, The Shining, and Bag of Bones. "I'm still substantially behind Mick, but The Dark Tower will be number five for me because I'm two weeks away from starting Carrie for Amazon, so that's first. I am certainly very grateful to have been allowed to play in the sandbox as long as he's let me, but I have no illusions about my place in that. I've got a long way to go." Some people might think it would be difficult to say no to Stephen King when it comes to his thoughts on what the big or small screen vision of his work should look like, as well as the writer-director's ideas on how it should be portrayed. Flanagan, the man behind acclaimed Netflix series The Haunting of Hill House, The Haunting of Bly Manor, and Midnight Mass, says it's "actually the opposite." "His attitude is that the book is the book and the movie is the movie, and he has no interest in influencing or interfering with the filmmaker," he reveals. "That's a double-edged sword because it gives you an enormous amount of freedom. He's there for approvals, and he'll share his thoughts, but he's by no means ever like, 'This is what has got to change,' or, 'This is what we're doing.' He's always deferential to the filmmaker." "The only rub to that is that when you're finished if he doesn't like what you did, he's not shy about that. Look at The Shining. He has never, to my knowledge, and I've never heard of it with any other filmmaker either, put me in a position where I've had a hard decision to make. I've known if he likes or doesn't like an element, and I want him to be very happy, but he's also emphatic that he's like, 'I want you to make the movie or show you want to make. I'm just the writer,' and I'll be like, 'Well, yeah, but you're Stephen King. You're not just a writer. It goes a little deeper.' He has been true to that philosophy. You know, for better or worse." (Left to right) Writer, director,, and co-producer Mike Flanagan with Tom Hiddleston on the set of ... More 'The Life of Chuck.' As well as Hiddleston, The Life of Chuck's ensemble also boasts Chiwetel Ejiofor, Karen Gillan, Mark Hamill, Mia Sara, Matthew Lillard, Rahul Kohli, Heather Langenkamp, as well as Nick Offerman as the Narrator. Did he see the Loki star as the leading man in his mind's eye when he was writing the script? "Not while I was writing it, no," Flanagan admits. "I knew we'd have to find someone who can sell the dance sequence in the movie because that is the centerpiece and the hinge point of the story. After it was written and we got into casting, it was like, 'Who can dance?' We began to look, and I saw many actors who had an incredible amount of dance experience. However, I came across a video of Tom Hiddleston on a late-night show, which might have been Graham Norton, where he spontaneously danced. What struck me wasn't the technical prowess of his dance, which was good, but I was struck by the unbridled and earnest joy that he was projecting while he did it. That's someone who loves that expression, and that, to me, was more important." "I thought that if he can channel that and I can feel that spontaneous joy radiating off of him the way I see in this video, that scene will work, and then the movie will work. We were incredibly aligned on it when we finally got to speak about it, and his priority was exactly the same. After that, people started to fall into place. There were people I knew I was writing for from my group that I knew I wanted, but I had no idea about Matthew Lillard coming in and devastating me in one scene. He was only on set for four hours. When I was writing the narration, I heard Stephen King's voice in my head more than anything. The idea of Nick Offerman wasn't even on my mind at all, and that broke open the movie for me again when he came on board. It was a lot of discovery." (Left to right) Kate Siegel, Mike Flanagan, Tom Hiddleston, Benjamin Pajak, Chiwetel Ejiofor, Mark ... More Hamill, Mia Sara, Karen Gillan and Carl Lumbly attend the Los Angeles Premiere of Neon's 'The Life Of Chuck' at Hollywood Legion Theater in Los Angeles, California. Offerman's Narrator follows in the footsteps of Richard Dreyfuss and Morgan Freeman, who have also taken on a similar role in guiding audiences through two other classic King adaptations: Stand By Me and The Shawshank Redemption. Offerman's dulcet yet commanding tones are perfect. "What all of those actors have in common is that they're incredibly good at playing the average guy," Flanagan enthuses. "There's not a pretension to their approach. They love the prose; they're able to deliver it naturally and with great impact without ever showing off or trying to infuse it with more pretension or importance than it deserves on the page. The prose is beautiful, but they're speaking it with humility, and that's the big difference. If you've got the wrong narrator, it's haughty. What I think Richard Dreyfuss, Morgan Freeman, and now, I hope, people agree Nick Offerman did so beautifully is to say things matter-of-factly without trying to manipulate the listener. They're lending the emotional weight where it's earned, and otherwise, it's just being conversational and guiding us through." "I love the way Nick approached this. He was so generous because we didn't have any money to pay him. We had to go to him scale and say, 'I hope you like the writing because that's all we have to offer, and he did. He said, 'I have a particular cadence to my voice, and it goes a little slower than you may be anticipating,' and I said that I understood. He also thought it would be helpful to the actors on set if they could hear it, so he recorded the entire movie in his car as a scratch track while he was on tour and sent it to us to playback on set for timing for the other actors. He did that knowing that he'd have to come in and do it all again for real when we tracked it in post. That's just who he is, and it made a huge difference. We were hearing the same movie that you hear while we were filming it, and that was an incredible gift that he gave us." (Left to right) Mia Sara and Brian Henson at 'The Life Of Chuck' after party at Mother Tongue in Los ... More Angeles, California. In addition to creating an incredible, powerful piece of cinema, another thing Flanagan has accomplished with aplomb is persuading Mia Sara to come out of retirement. The Ferris Bueller's Day Off, Legend, and Timecop star hasn't appeared on screen since 2013. "She made a critical mistake," he laughs. "I had met her husband, Brian Henson, and he told me Mia was a big fan of Midnight Mass. We decided to have a double date, so Brian, Mia, my wife Kate, and I went to dinner. At dinner, Mia was gushing about Midnight Mass and what she loved about it. We were talking about where she was in her life and everything else, and what a fan of hers I am, and she said, 'I'm retired,' and I was like, 'No, but that's such a shame,' and she said, 'I'll tell you what. If you call me, I will happily come out, even if it's just to say one line or walk by in the background, I would do it for you.'" "I don't know if she was serious and meant me to take her up on it, but I filed that away already, thinking this might be happening. It was months later that the movie was greenlit, and I got to call her and say, 'Remember that thing you said about coming out of retirement? Guess what? I'd really love it if you would,' and she did. It was such a wonderful thing to have her on set. She hadn't been on set in a fair amount of time, and I know she was a little nervous when she first arrived, but she's so luminous in the movie. It was such a pleasure to see her, Benjamin, and Mark Hamill and the way they hit it off and interacted. When I said, 'Really, for me, the heart of this is going to be when you're dancing in the kitchen with Benjamin, who plays a young Chuck,' and she was like, 'Oh, that I can do.' I feel honored that this project brought her back. I'm just enormously grateful that Mia said yes." Writer-producer and director Mike Flanagan on the set of 'The Life of Chuck.' Despite the glowing reviews and the film's (first) awards win, Flanagan is the first to admit that he's nervous about his first theatrical release since 2019's Doctor Sleep, which underperformed. However, as always, Stephen King has stepped up with wise words to support the creative. "I got into this business because I love movies, and I love going to the movies," he explains. "My first job was working at Cineplex Odeon in Bowie, Maryland, and I would clean the theaters after the show, pick up all the popcorn and listen to the music, then watch the credits crawl and stand there dragging a trash can, dreaming of making movies for the movie theater. That's why I'm here. I love the theatrical experience. I love cinema. I've been incredibly fortunate to have achieved so much in streaming. There's an incredible benefit to that model as well. You can't do The Haunting of Hill House for the big screen. They won't let you, and I wouldn't want to watch it that way. However, there's something very different about making a movie and putting it out to the world for the shared experience." "Doctor Sleep is still the biggest movie I've ever made by a lot. A lot was riding on it, and it did not deliver the box office that the studio wanted. I was there opening night at the Arclight Hollywood in an empty theater at 7:30 going, 'Uh oh.' Stephen King talked to me that Monday after the movie bombed, and he said, 'I don't want you to worry about this because the only thing that matters is time. I was there when The Shawshank Redemption bombed. I was there when The Shining bombed. Time is very different to box office. Give it some time.' With Doctor Sleep, that has proven to be the case. The audience on that one keeps growing, and I'm amazed and delighted to find that it's still finding people." Flanagan, chatting over Zoom just days ahead of The Life of Chuck's release, concludes, "With this one, the pressure is enormous, just because this was designed to be experienced that way. I've seen it on a big screen with a crowd, and there's nothing like it. I've also seen it at home on my TV set. It's a very different experience, and I prefer the first one very much. I hope people will go out and see it that way. I'm going to try hard not just to stare at the numbers because that isn't what defines the value of a movie. 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