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The Life of Chuck has had mixed reviews so the question is whether his is worth two hours of yours. 

That isn’t easy to answer though. This film is always interesting and often charming, it has wonderful performances and a lot of imagination and vision. I’m not sure that in end it works as well as it could though. It definitely feels that it is less than the sum of its impressive parts. It has big ideas that are largely realised but it is best when it is operating at its simplest; telling of small life events and the joys of human connection. It is also a bit of an emotional rollercoaster but in a way that makes it feel like it doesn’t quite know what it wants to be. 

The movie, like the novella it comes from, is told in a trio of chapters that are presented in reverse order. The second of these is delightful centring on Chuck in middle age and around an incident where he stops and dances to a busker. The whole sequence genuinely lifts your heart while you are watching it but the edge is taken off this somewhat by the fact that the previous section, Chapter Three, has just taken your heart and sunk it so low that at best it can only make it back up to your knees. The final part, Chapter One, then contextualises the dancing scene which adds a very bittersweet layer it didn’t previously have. This closing section also brings in a supernatural element that doesn’t really add anything other than to explain why, in a manner that is as clumsy as it is poetic, Chuck is so focused on living the life the film takes its name from.

The opening part, upsetting as it is, is probably the best executed but all have great moments. Chuck’s relationship with his Grandma is played out very sweetly in the closing chapter (although the fact that the Grandmother is portrayed by Mia Sara who played Ferris Bueller’s girlfriend just five minutes ago is probably the most depressing thing of all). 

The Life of Chuck will make you contemplate your own existence and it may even inspire you to make big changes. It has strong messages around how any life can be the most important life of all, how anyone can be the one that everyone comes to depend on without even knowing it, and it clearly succeeds in all of its aims. In the end, for good or for bad, it certainly has a life of its own but some of the cherries in the bowl might stick in your throat.