Sometimes a romantic story can be quite strange, and love can come when you don’t expect it at all, even though it’s just a consequence of a well-completed annual work assignment. After all, there is no less bureaucracy in heaven than in sinful land, and two cupid angels simply need to execute a plan for marriages as opposed to the incredible number of divorces, otherwise they will be deprived of a bonus / firing / shooting / landing (the latter, in their opinion, the worst). For positive statistics, this pair of celestial colleagues did not find anything better than to try to bring together a loser kidnapper who dreams of writing a successful tabloid novel, and the capricious daughter of a rich dad, which he stole altogether by accident.
Probably, only an English director could make a hooligan romantic comedy out of Stockholm syndrome with elements of a sometimes action movie, and sometimes a musical, and even so that the experiment was successful. In this film, everything is fine - and evil-evil humor is not without self-harm, and idiots-coupids (sometimes so even bloodthirsty, to become the nineties), and a very young and very charming Kidnapper Evan McGregor (not yet Obi Van-Kenobi, but just a textured and gifted guy with a clear future in the movie), and even the heroine Cameron Diaz causes pity and irony (heck, she was once a good actress). Perhaps for Turgenev’s young ladies, the film is harsh, but personally it always makes me laugh, and sometimes even to my voice. I especially love the funny scene in the phone booth, where the heroine teaches the hero to demand ransom in the best traditions of O’Henry. And how warmly the couple sings in karaoke (where you can see the stage preparation of McGregor). And the final declaration of love here is a masterpiece - really, well, what else can you expect from the director of "On the Needle"?
And, by the way, it shows a couple where a woman is more active, cynical and assertive than an intelligent and weak romantic man (although he is not a slug or a victim of a feminist script), but the two are even happy and complement each other. It's rare.
I met this film a long time ago, but I loved it immediately and for a long time. This is the third time I’ve seen it and I’m still amazed.
I don't understand why "Less Common Life" is so unpopular. This is a very charming and easy movie, very funny and crazy. Yes, it is somewhat chaotic, motley, absurd - but at the same time organic.
The main characters are images, on the one hand, of course typical. She is a cynical, seemingly cold, full of rich life girl. He is a true dreamer, with the inherent awkwardness, insecurity, inability to settle in this cruel reality. The bulge and recognition of these characters gives us a feeling of something very familiar, homely, native, allows us to love these characters and identify with them. At the same time, all the characters, both main and secondary, are completely insane. In a good sense, in the sense of the unconventionality of their decisions, the unexpectedness of their reactions and the paradoxical nature of the situations in which they fall. As they say, you won’t miss them. In general, the plot twists cannot be called predictable, and the characters are normal.
The film is full of humor - such humor, as a rule, is classified as "black", but it is surprising that here this black humor is light, warm and does not cause any ambivalent sensation, but only the most pleasant emotions. Because this humor stems from the characters themselves: from their recklessness, purposefulness, willingness to take any risk for love, from their charming, loving madness, which saturated the entire film, from beginning to end.
The film comes out of all genre boundaries: it is not a melodrama in the style of Hollywood romantic comedies, and not a criminal story in the usual sense, but there are definitely elements of both, and many more surprises (for example, a hole in the chest). Therefore, it is not necessary to tune in to any particular genre or style. If you decide to watch this film, I advise you to accept it as it is, with all its audacity and absurdity.
If any of you have read Gabriel Garcia Márquez, you can understand what real madness is... so Boyle’s “Life Worse Than Normal” is chaos, madness, fiction, satire, parody. A subtle mockery of the laws of the crime drama genre, actively using humor and crazy turns of events. This is a total banter over typical melodramatic cliches and genre clichés, despite this, the theme of relationship and love is very elegantly revealed, where you will see such things as neither Boyle.
It’s not a trivial comparison, it’s like Saints Row, just a movie, so there’s absolutely everything! Oddly enough, I will not put this film in the TOP, but there was a very pleasant opinion about the film, if at first I was sad and entertained myself with chips, then I was completely absorbed in the extraordinary fantasy of feelings and emotions caused when watching the film. And, of course, Boyle is a big bow as always for the music and selection of actors, McGregor and Diaz!
Marriages are made in heaven when angels gather together on earth.
The ever-increasing number of divorces on the planet creates a panic in heaven, questioning not only the importance of the relationship between the sexes, but the very existence of love. To rectify the situation is entrusted to two angels who are sent to Earth with the order to bring together the most incompatible couple, Celine is the spoiled daughter of a rich man, brought up in luxury and frivolity, and Robert is an unlucky janitor in the firm of her father, who dreams of writing a world bestseller. After Robert is fired, his beloved girl goes to an aerobics instructor, and the housing is taken for debts, he brazenly kidnaps Celine straight from the office and goes with her on a risky trip around the country, full of romantic adventures, spectacular chases and dashing shootouts.
To create their third joint and first Hollywood film, the British triumvirate Boyle, Hodge and McDonald gathered a proven team of specialists, Evan McGregor was again invited to the main role, and compositions of the most significant teams of the 90s were selected for the musical design, ranging from REM to The Cardigans. Armed with a decent budget, Boyle shot a comedy-adventure road movie with musical numbers, plasticine animation, elements of a crime thriller and a black comedy, in which all murders are only a farce, the number of absurd situations goes off the scale, and of all possible options for the development of the action, the craziest is always carried out. The combination of an exciting plot, easy presentation of material, clip manner of shooting, reckless road atmosphere and killer soundtrack, turns the film into a real attraction. Performed in postmodern style, generously flavored with harsh, but in its own charming humor, and a scattering of all kinds of references, the film mocks the typical clichés of both individual genres and the Hollywood film industry as a whole.
In his own way, the director works on his favorite topics: life and death, money and love. Concluding the philosophy of the film in a simple thesis - in the modern world, everyone for himself - Boyle examines the features of human nature, in which the desire to live and love coexists with the desire for profit and power. Creating a parody of an ordinary love story, he deliberately changes the direction of typical gender roles: the nominal kidnapper is Robert, but it is Celine who directs the entire scam, he prepares food and reads a love story, and she chops wood and wins an alcoholic duel, he wears pink and kilt, and she is blue and pants. McGregor is one in three faces of a kidnapper, a hero-lover and a loser, for whom any undertaking becomes fatal, and Diaz is good in the image of a daring, ruthless and bitchy beauty who is used to keeping the situation under control. Even despite the lack of obvious on-screen chemistry, their duo succeeded, and the vocal and dance scene in the karaoke bar became a real decoration of the picture.
Being a kind of nod in the direction of the classic “Stairway to the Sky” by Michael Powell and using the formula of the recent “Excess Baggage” by Marco Brombilla, the film with its frenzied tone deserves comparison with the works of the Coen brothers, and the realm of absurdity, violence and general style encroaches on the territory of Tarantino. It is no coincidence that in the close-in-spirit “Education of Arizona” one of the main roles was played by the same Holly Hunter, and the dialogue of the characters in the car refers us to a similar scene in “Reservoir Dogs” with the participation of Mr. White and Mr. Orange. The hitchhiking scene partially quotes Frank Capra's "It Happened One Night," and the robot that replaced Robert at work and looks like R2D2 from Star Wars anticipates McGregor's upcoming role as Obi-Wan Kenobi, and along the way epitomizes a caustic satire of corporate America, with its indifference to the individual.
Coolly received by the audience and critics, and without becoming a cult, the film, however, did its job - Danny Boyle lit up in Hollywood, Evan McGregor, receiving for the role of Robert the film award of Empire magazine, became a world celebrity, and John Hodge got his hand on the scripts and adaptations of modern novels. The film, limited to only two musical nominations of the MTV award and a dubious remake of Indian origin, will be remembered by the viewer not only as the last joint work of Boyle and McGregor, but also as a bright, original and ironic film statement on the topic of human relations.
I’m a small connoisseur of Danny Boyle’s work, but I liked his two completely different films (127 Hours and Slumdog Millionaire) at the time. And although I had little idea what they had in common, which prevented me from seeing in Boyle his style and the very feature that could distinguish him from others, I still decided to watch a romantic crime comedy from the director who captivated me with dramas.
To Danny Boyle's credit, his comedy doesn't look like typical adventurous romcoms. During the film, the characters are so detached that it would seem that everything that is possible happens to them. Lots of wounds, murders, violence for this genre. But everything looks harmless and even funny. Chaos reigns on the screen. And I, as I expected, was going to be conquered. An-Net.
I like black humor. A less familiar life is a hotbed of this. But the film didn’t impress me at all. Personally, I didn't laugh that much. If it weren’t for the actors, I wouldn’t even smile. So the scenario, in my opinion, is a bit weak.
For all the extravagantness of the movie (and people love unusual love stories), I thought it was all too much. For me, all this clowning has reached a point where it has stopped laughing. You know, when there are so many twists and turns of the plot that it becomes stupidly uninteresting to watch what happens. It's from this story. I was not intrigued by the story at all. I thought it was ridiculous.
And all I can praise in the film is acting. In general, the main pair is the notorious Cameron Diaz and Evan McGregor. It was very interesting to see them in the duo. Because in my head they couldn't get into one movie. The repertoire is very different. But no. They were great. Including the music room. How they sing, how they dance!
I was also pleased with Holly Hunter, who conquered me in Piano. From her came almost phenomenal “worker of heaven”. This is where most of the funniest moments come from. And the inimitable Stanley Tucci was good, albeit in a small role.
As for the soundtrack, I found it very noisy. Maybe I'm just emotionally tired, but that's what I would take away. In the first half of the picture, he completely distracted from what was happening. Almost all the tracks were drive, and I wanted to dilute it a little bit with some slow song. Really, I was nervous. In general, with the soundtrack, as with everything else, Danny Boyle overdid.
Summarizing all that I have written, I can say that Less familiar life definitely loses to other works of Boyle. This comedy-farce also did not convince me of the love between the main characters. There was not enough space for them in the story itself. Their acquaintance turned out to be fragmentary. So even a romcom isn't good. With all due respect to Mr. Boyle, and with all the strangeness of the story, I did not like the film. And if you have to choose between a good but standard romantic comedy and this one, I'll choose the first one. Because shocking doesn't always slip into something worthwhile.