Life Itself

 

Life Itself 2018

• Director: Dan Fogelman
• Based on book: no
• Cast: Oscar Isaac, Olivia Wilde, Annette Bening, Mandy Patinkin, Jean Smart, Olivia Cooke, Sergio Peris-Mencheta, Antonio Banderas, Laia Costa, Àlex Monner, Isabel Durant, Lorenza Izzo, with the voice and a brief appearance of Samuel L Jackson (I don’t need to list him, do I? You all know who he is.)
• Personal “oh yeah him/her” reaction, i.e. have seen this actor in:
• Oscar Isaac – Dune, Annihilation, Star Wars the Last Jedi, X-Men Apocalypse, Ex Machina, Inside Llewyn Davis, Robin Hood
• Annette Bening – Death on the Nile, Ginger & Rosa, The Kids Are All Right, American Beauty, Mars Attacks!, Richard III, The Grifters
• Mandy Patinkin – Dead Like Me, Lulu on the Bridge, Impromptu, Daniel, Ragtime
• Antonio Banders – The 33, Once Upon a Time in Mexico, Frida, Evita, Interview with the Vampire, Philadelphia
• Why?  The cast
• Seen:  20 June 2023 

The DVD box has an alarmingly feel-good rom com vibe but I like several of the actors so there is hope.

It doesn’t start out as either feel-good or rom com. One character is hit and killed by a bus, another goes crazy and is institutionalised, there’s a dog called Fuckface, one character was orphaned early and take in by an abusive uncle. The point seems to be that life is the ultimate unreliable narrator of life. And that’s only the first chapter.

So far so good.

Sadly, it goes down from there. The next three chapters are not without interest but both feel-good and mushy romance creep in and finally take over. Such a pity. But the first chapter is so good that it gets 

3* of 5