A Life Less Ordinary

Danny Boyle, UK 1997, 103 mins

For their third film the Boyle-McDonald-Hodge team moves away from the mean streets of Edinburgh to the USA, taking Ewan McGregor along once more.

McGregor plays a not-too-bright would-be writer resident in the States who is working as a cleaner in a faceless corporation until he makes it. When the corporation's boss (Ian Holm) decides to replace all his cleaners with robots, the timid McGregor decides it's time to stand up and be a man. He goes to confront Holm, just as Holm's estranged daughter (Cameron Diaz) is visiting her father. Holm mocks McGregor who spontaneously responds by kidnapping Diaz. She's happy to go along with McGregor's plan', but the kidnapper and kidnappee are soon at each other's throats. Meanwhile Holm hires two bounty hunters (Holly Hunter and Delroy Lindo) to bring back his daughter. He, naturally, is unaware that they are, of course, angels who have been sent on a mission to ensure that McGregor and Diaz fall in love.

A Life Less Ordinary is the Trainspotting team's attempt to make a 1930s screwball comedy for the 1990s, throwing in the heavenly bureaucracies of It's A Wonderful Life (1946) and A Matter of Life and Death (1946) with the socially mismatched couples of It Happened One Night (1934) and Bringing Up Baby (1938).

Sadly, however, the film never really gets going. While the McGregor/Diaz interplay has its moments there are never sufficient sparks to start the flame of romance. Knowing who Lindo and Hunter are along with their mission removes suspense. (The presence of Hunter also, unfortunately, tends to remind one of the similar, but superior, Raising Arizona (1987).)

One of A Life Less Ordinary's strengths, though, is its honesty. Whereas with Shallow Grave and Trainspotting the filmmakers indulged in cinematic sleight-of-hand to try to conceal scripting weaknesses, A Life Less Ordinary wears its heart on its sleeve. From the outset it pleads "don't take me too seriously, I'm just a piece of fluff. Just sit back and enjoy." If you can accept this contract then A Life Less Ordinary will deliver on it.

Keith H. Brown
EUFS Programme 1998-99