Life Itself (2018)

[Ezen Baklattan]

You know what to do.

[Ezen Baklattan]

Let me preface this review by saying that I have yet to see This Is Us, but I do believe I would enjoy it, and I did enjoy Crazy Stupid Love a good bit as well. I've also enjoyed some of Fogelman's Disney projects, namely Bolt and Tangled. With that said...

 

Keep in mind I will spoil a lot of this movie.

 

Life Itself prides itself as a film that promises to tug at the heartstrings and make you cry, but would still offer an uplifting, heartfelt, and life-affirming message to tie it all together. At least, that's clearly what the trailers described. For the first five minutes of the film, it seemed like Fogelman was one step ahead of us. The film actually seemed like it might defy the trailers into unique territory that plays with storytelling, narrative styles, and genre. And you know what? I was intrigued. Of course, it seemed a bit too try hard, but it was going in the direction that if it were going to be a misfire, it would have at least been an interesting one.

 

Eventually, we learn in five minutes that Wilde and Isaac left. So I'm guessing this will be (500) Days of Summer lite with an ensemble cast. Mandy Patinkin, my man, shows up and does good work in the scene he's in, and Isaac, much like the script itself, slowly starts to become irritating in its descent into pure "white male film student pitching his first screenplay that isn't nearly as brilliant and interesting as he thinks it is". Thankfully it moves away from that and runs right towards melodrama even more ludicrous than the trailers promised. So little Wilde's pitch perfect parents perish (say that 10 times fast) in a brutal car accident that "decapitates" the father. Nice image there. Moreover, she moves in with his abusive (including SEXUALLY) uncle who torments her to the point where she SHOOTS him in the knee. Good god, the Bauldelaire Orphans had a better life than this. As you can see, the tone is a pinball game in the first 20 minutes, but then, we find out that she goes to college and starts having a good life. She's writing a thesis (which is later revealed to be poorly received by her faculty) about the unreliable narrator. Moreover, she says that the most unreliable narrator is...

 

Spoiler

Guess.

Spoiler

You probably know it.

Spoiler

Your worst fear is true.

Spoiler

The most unreliable narrator is....

Spoiler

Life Itself.

 

 

 

 

 

Yep, they drop the title than and there. Moreover, the phrase "unreliable narrator" is used as often as Martin Scorsese uses the f-word. The film uses it a lot here too, but it comes off again as that "edgy first screenplay" vibe. They go so far as to name the dog "fuckface." It gets a giggle the first time, but it feels pretty damn forced.

 

So Wilde turns out to be abruptly hit by a bus (It's shot almost the same way as Mean Girls) and dies. Oscar Isaac kills himself soon after. Moreover, the scene where it happens is shot almost as if it's a humorous scene. And then they have the fucking nerve to treat is as something completely serious. By this point, the movie was really starting to lose me. It almost plays like watching someone playing Sims but get so bored that they decide to torture and kill them. Keep in mind, these characters, who were basically the focus of 80% of the marketing, are killed off in the first third of the movie.

 

I mean, I'm not opposed to unexpectedly small roles, but....good lord, the first 40 minutes are a mess. A bunch of shit is mashed togehter as if Dan Fogelman is throwing spaghetti at the wall to try and decide what sticks, constantly switching between genre savvy edge and straight maudlin melodrama.

 

The remainder of the film pulls in both direction, but does so in the worst manner.

 

Olivia Cooke plays their angst ridden daughter (Wilde was pregnant when she met her maker, the baby survived but became a moody manic pixie dream teen who is angry and angsty and a punk rocker who smashes cell phones and is hostile and anti-social. Becuase that's the only way to write complex teen characters, apparently. She's also named after Bob Dylan, who the film won't shut the fuck about prori to this point) while over in Spain, Antonio Banderas is the employer to a man named Javier who falls in love with a woman named Isabel. They have a kid named Rodrigo. Low and behold, a young Rodrigo was on the bus when Wilde got ran over, and he implicitly caused it and has trauma over it. By this point, it's absolutely predictable that Rodrigo is going to end up with Sad Art3mis...and that's exactly what happens!

 

But wait, there needs to be more drama! Because Dan Fogelman apparently really hates these characters!

 

Seriously, the film plays more like a cosmic horror story with how much they love to make the characters suffer in this. 

 

Javier gets spiteful and jealous, and Isabel gets cancer and dies. Because every woman in this movie either:

• Exists solely to serve the purpose of a man.
• Needs to be rescued from a bitter life by a man.
• Suffers and perishes to serve the emotional development of a man.

But wait, if you had a clue about what kind of movie this is, you wouldn't have to guess that Isabel, prior to her death, gives a dull-ass monologue full of platitudes with the depth of a Hallmark card, as the film tries so very very hard to make you cry to a point where it feels so unorganic, so piled on, that you practically feel Dan Fogelman breathing down your neck and asking you: "Oh my gosh this is so sad am I not a heartfelt brilliant writer?! CRY FOR ME DAMNIT!!"

 

The film ends with a book reading because Dylan and Rodrigo's daughter writes a book about their aggresively hetero family.

 

I don't understand. Everything was on paper for this film to be good. Fogelman has done good work, the cast is great, (and they do what they can with the material quite nicely, especially the Spanish family and the performances of Costa and Peris-Mencheta) and I'm even a sucker for more emotional, schmaltzy films (e.g. Wonder, Marley and Me, etc.) and those "everything is connected" kinda movies that talk about life itself. It's the kinda stuff I really enjoyed as a younger film lover, so I have a soft space for it in my heart. But even then I would have hated this movie as much as it did now.

 

It could have been just a simple little melodrama and I wouldn't get this worked up, but the film operates from such an inept, insulting, and irritating focus that it drives me up the fucking wall. Nothing in this feels sincere or organic. At least with Book of Henry and Collateral Beauty, as bizarre of trainwrecks there are, there's a singular passion and energy into them that feels unique as they go completely off the rails, this may be more apt to compare to Crash or Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, where things aren't just messy and invigorating, but disgustingly manipulative and borderline explotative, nihilistic, misogynistic, lifeless, an just plain bad. 

 

I mean, every film is emotionally manipulative as an inherent feature to a degree, but there's a line between true, genuine emotion and beating you over the head with wanton tragedy and suffering and weakly sticking a "life is good" message at the end. That's literally what happens. Trauma for the first 110 minutes, then they narrate at the end how everything is okay.

 

I made me a white male, but this made me emotional. It made me angry. Very very angry.

 

1/5

[Eric Loves Rey]

Yeah, what he said.

 

Also of note, there's a bit of dialouge where Jean Smart as Oscar Isaac's mom tells Olivia Wilde that she's happy her parents are dead, because she always wanted her son to marry someone with dead parents so she can keep the grandkids.

 

Also, college-aged Rodrigo's girlfriend tells him that she's pregnant, only until after an insufferable 5-minute monolouge tells him that it was an April Fool's joke, because...comedy?

Edited September 22, 2018 by CoolEric258

[TalismanRing]

She's writing a thesis (which is later revealed to be poorly received by her faculty) 

 

Oh come on! - not allowed to have even one win before being creamed by a bus.  😒

 

[DAR]

1 hour ago, Spagheditary said:

Let me preface this review by saying that I have yet to see This Is Us, but I do believe I would enjoy it, and I did enjoy Crazy Stupid Love a good bit as well. I've also enjoyed some of Fogelman's Disney projects, namely Bolt and Tangled. With that said...

 

Keep in mind I will spoil a lot of this movie.

 

Life Itself prides itself as a film that promises to tug at the heartstrings and make you cry, but would still offer an uplifting, heartfelt, and life-affirming message to tie it all together. At least, that's clearly what the trailers described. For the first five minutes of the film, it seemed like Fogelman was one step ahead of us. The film actually seemed like it might defy the trailers into unique territory that plays with storytelling, narrative styles, and genre. And you know what? I was intrigued. Of course, it seemed a bit too try hard, but it was going in the direction that if it were going to be a misfire, it would have at least been an interesting one.

 

Eventually, we learn in five minutes that Wilde and Isaac left. So I'm guessing this will be (500) Days of Summer lite with an ensemble cast. Mandy Patinkin, my man, shows up and does good work in the scene he's in, and Isaac, much like the script itself, slowly starts to become irritating in its descent into pure "white male film student pitching his first screenplay that isn't nearly as brilliant and interesting as he thinks it is". Thankfully it moves away from that and runs right towards melodrama even more ludicrous than the trailers promised. So little Wilde's pitch perfect parents perish (say that 10 times fast) in a brutal car accident that "decapitates" the father. Nice image there. Moreover, she moves in with his abusive (including SEXUALLY) uncle who torments her to the point where she SHOOTS him in the knee. Good god, the Bauldelaire Orphans had a better life than this. As you can see, the tone is a pinball game in the first 20 minutes, but then, we find out that she goes to college and starts having a good life. She's writing a thesis (which is later revealed to be poorly received by her faculty) about the unreliable narrator. Moreover, she says that the most unreliable narrator is...

 

  Hide contents

Guess.

  Hide contents

You probably know it.

  Hide contents

Your worst fear is true.

  Hide contents

The most unreliable narrator is....

  Hide contents

Life Itself.

 

 

 

 

 

Yep, they drop the title than and there. Moreover, the phrase "unreliable narrator" is used as often as Martin Scorsese uses the f-word. The film uses it a lot here too, but it comes off again as that "edgy first screenplay" vibe. They go so far as to name the dog "fuckface." It gets a giggle the first time, but it feels pretty damn forced.

 

So Wilde turns out to be abruptly hit by a bus (It's shot almost the same way as Mean Girls) and dies. Oscar Isaac kills himself soon after. Moreover, the scene where it happens is shot almost as if it's a humorous scene. And then they have the fucking nerve to treat is as something completely serious. By this point, the movie was really starting to lose me. It almost plays like watching someone playing Sims but get so bored that they decide to torture and kill them. Keep in mind, these characters, who were basically the focus of 80% of the marketing, are killed off in the first third of the movie.

 

I mean, I'm not opposed to unexpectedly small roles, but....good lord, the first 40 minutes are a mess. A bunch of shit is mashed togehter as if Dan Fogelman is throwing spaghetti at the wall to try and decide what sticks, constantly switching between genre savvy edge and straight maudlin melodrama.

 

The remainder of the film pulls in both direction, but does so in the worst manner.

 

Olivia Cooke plays their angst ridden daughter (Wilde was pregnant when she met her maker, the baby survived but became a moody manic pixie dream teen who is angry and angsty and a punk rocker who smashes cell phones and is hostile and anti-social. Becuase that's the only way to write complex teen characters, apparently. She's also named after Bob Dylan, who the film won't shut the fuck about prori to this point) while over in Spain, Antonio Banderas is the employer to a man named Javier who falls in love with a woman named Isabel. They have a kid named Rodrigo. Low and behold, a young Rodrigo was on the bus when Wilde got ran over, and he implicitly caused it and has trauma over it. By this point, it's absolutely predictable that Rodrigo is going to end up with Sad Art3mis...and that's exactly what happens!

 

But wait, there needs to be more drama! Because Dan Fogelman apparently really hates these characters!

 

Seriously, the film plays more like a cosmic horror story with how much they love to make the characters suffer in this. 

 

Javier gets spiteful and jealous, and Isabel gets cancer and dies. Because every woman in this movie either:

• Exists solely to serve the purpose of a man.
• Needs to be rescued from a bitter life by a man.
• Suffers and perishes to serve the emotional development of a man.

But wait, if you had a clue about what kind of movie this is, you wouldn't have to guess that Isabel, prior to her death, gives a dull-ass monologue full of platitudes with the depth of a Hallmark card, as the film tries so very very hard to make you cry to a point where it feels so unorganic, so piled on, that you practically feel Dan Fogelman breathing down your neck and asking you: "Oh my gosh this is so sad am I not a heartfelt brilliant writer?! CRY FOR ME DAMNIT!!"

 

The film ends with a book reading because Dylan and Rodrigo's daughter writes a book about their aggresively hetero family.

 

I don't understand. Everything was on paper for this film to be good. Fogelman has done good work, the cast is great, (and they do what they can with the material quite nicely, especially the Spanish family and the performances of Costa and Peris-Mencheta) and I'm even a sucker for more emotional, schmaltzy films (e.g. Wonder, Marley and Me, etc.) and those "everything is connected" kinda movies that talk about life itself. It's the kinda stuff I really enjoyed as a younger film lover, so I have a soft space for it in my heart. But even then I would have hated this movie as much as it did now.

 

It could have been just a simple little melodrama and I wouldn't get this worked up, but the film operates from such an inept, insulting, and irritating focus that it drives me up the fucking wall. Nothing in this feels sincere or organic. At least with Book of Henry and Collateral Beauty, as bizarre of trainwrecks there are, there's a singular passion and energy into them that feels unique as they go completely off the rails, this may be more apt to compare to Crash or Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, where things aren't just messy and invigorating, but disgustingly manipulative and borderline explotative, nihilistic, misogynistic, lifeless, an just plain bad. 

 

I mean, every film is emotionally manipulative as an inherent feature to a degree, but there's a line between true, genuine emotion and beating you over the head with wanton tragedy and suffering and weakly sticking a "life is good" message at the end. That's literally what happens. Trauma for the first 110 minutes, then they narrate at the end how everything is okay.

 

I made me a white male, but this made me emotional. It made me angry. Very very angry.

 

1/5

So mixed?

[DAJK]

[Nova]

Read the reviews. This movie sounds great to be honest. I don't see what the problem with it is. 

[TOG]

it turns out the real Life Itself was the friends we made along the way.