A Life Less Ordinary

Comment:
This year's light comedies are definitely better than usual, after My Best Friend's Wedding and Addicted to Love we have another quite original and enjoyable movie. Given that I am not an admirer of this genre, I found this quite surprising... maybe my tastes are changing...

The plot is organised in a rather peculiar way, the basic story looks rather conventional but there are a couple of angels interfering with people which adds a lot of weird and amusing moments. The main character is Robert, a janitor who has had a bad day (he lost his job, apartment and girlfriend) and kidnaps Celine, the daughter of his ex-boss, as a sort of revenge. However, he is quite helpless at this and she finally ends up helping him... it's useless to say that a rather silly love story follows, supported by the above mentioned angels.

We've seen a lot of movies with angels doing some tricky plots in order to make two people fall in love but this time the methods they use are very uncommon and they also seem to do this for very personal and not altruistic reasons! Heaven is shown in a very modern fashion (but still 'painted' in classic white) and hence provides a few very entertaining scenes, including a phone call starting with "This is Gabriel, get me God" and ending with a ridicule conversation between the angel and God himself.

The negative sides of this movie are mainly located near the end which features a very deluding pre-finale, greatly redeemed by a surprising post-finale (because it was shown during the closing credits) featuring clay animations which continued the story in a very funny way. Not all the actors were always convincing, particularly Ewan McGregor didn't seem to be always very confident with his role unlike Cameron Diaz who seemed to play her character quite well... after all she always seems to play similar roles in all her movies so she must be familiar with it!

What made me enjoy the movie was the completely crazy plot that managed to maintain a high level of interest all the time and provided a source of unpredictable and compelling fun. A final positive note is the soundtrack that features an integral execution of 'Leave' by R.E.M. which really stands out... it's just a small detail but I am always impressed by this kind of distinctive points!