The Life of Chuck is a story told in reverse.
The world is ending and teacher Marty Anderson (Chiwetel Ejiofor) wonders why he keeps seeing signs that announce, “Charles Krantz: 39 Great Years! Thanks, Chuck!” Marty’s ex-wife (Karen Gillan) calls him and tells him that, at the hospital where she works, she and her co-workers have taken to calling themselves “the suicide squad.” It would be an effective moment if not for the fact that the film’s narration (somewhat predictably voiced by Nick Offerman) had already informed us of that fact. Everyone wonders why the world is falling apart. Why has the internet gone off-line? Why has California finally sunk into the ocean? Why are people rioting? Several characters say that it’s the end times before then adding that it’s not the same end time that the “religious fanatics” and “right-wing nuts” always talk about. Thanks for clarifying that! It’s nice to know that, at the end of the world, people will still talk like an aging Maine boomer.
Nine months earlier, a straight-laced banked named Chuck Krantz (Tom Hiddleston) comes across a busker playing her drums on a street corner and feels inspired to start dancing.
Years earlier, a young boy named Chuck Krantz is raised by his grandmother (Mia Sara) and his grandfather (Mark Hamill). Young Chuck (Jacob Tremblay) inherits a love of dance from his grandmother but, after she dies in a supermarket, his grandfather turns to drinking. His grandfather keeps one room in their house locked. (There’s even an absurdly huge lock on the door because The Life of Chuck is not a subtle one.) Eventually, Chuck discovers what is hidden away in the room and it shapes the rest of his life.
Occasionally, solid genre craftsmen will fill the need to prove that they’re actually deeper than people give them credit for. In 2020, Stephen King published a novella called The Life of Chuck. In October of 2023, director Mike Flanagan announced that he had begun filming on his adaptation of The Life of Chuck. Both King and Flanagan are better-known for their contributions to the horror gerne, though, around 2017, King apparently decided that he was also meant to be a political pundit. (No writer, with the possible exception of Joyce Carol Oates, has done more damage to their reputation by joining twitter than Stephen King.) There are elements of horror to be found in The Life of Chuck. There’s the world ending during Act One. There’s the locked rom in Act Three. There’s the terrible acting of the woman playing the drummer in Act Two. But this definitely is not a horror film. Instead, it’s King and Flanagan at their most sentimental, heartfelt, and ultimately simplistic.
It’s ultimately a bit too self-consciously quirky for its own good. Flanagan seems to be really concerned that we’ll miss the point of the film so he directs with a heavy-hand and, at times, he overexplains. Sometimes, you have to have some faith in your audience and their ability to figure out things on their own. The scenes of Chuck’s childhood are so shot through a haze of nostalgia that they feel as overly stylized as the scenes that don’t necessarily take place in our reality. For the most part, the narration could have been ditched without weakening the film. That said, the film is hardly a disaster. There are moments that work, like the joyous scene of Tom Hiddleston dancing. The film tries a bit too hard to be profound but there’s joy to be found in the performances of Hiddleston and Jacob Tremblay. Chucks seems like a nice guy.
Thanks, Chuck!
Through the Shattered Lens 