A Life Less Ordinary
Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation | Release Date: October 24, 1997 CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION
35
METASCORE
Generally unfavorable reviews based on 22 Critic Reviews
Positive:
3
Mixed:
11
Negative:
8
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Critic Reviews

Critic scorePublicationBy date
80
SalonStephanie Zacharek
Gloriously excessive, passionate and messy, A Life Less Ordinary is the kind of picture that's becoming more and more of a rarity in the landscape of American movies: a love story with a hard-on. Read full review
75
Rolling StonePeter Travers
The movie damn near lives up to that promise. Picture the Marx brothers and the Coen boys collaborating on a valentine spiked with mirth and malice. Read full review
63
ReelViewsJames Berardinelli
From start to finish, A Life Less Ordinary feels like a group of sometimes amusing, sometimes clever, and sometimes tedious skits forced to fit together. Read full review
60
The New York TimesElvis Mitchell
Mr. Boyle's brand of heaven-sent love story comes with a strange and whimsical mean streak. Tender thoughts and ha-ha shootings don't automatically mix. Read full review
50
Chicago Sun-TimesRoger Ebert
The film expends enormous energy to tell a story that is tedious and contrived. Read full review
50
The Globe and Mail (Toronto)Rick Groen
Here, one begins to suspect that the major impediment is the sensibility of the filmmakers themselves. They don't believe in this stuff, in its unavoidable sentimentality, and that attitude filters down to a perplexed cast. Read full review
50
Chicago ReaderLisa Alspector
All this is accompanied by a too-emphatic pop sound track that turns almost every scene into a bad music video. Read full review
50
Christian Science MonitorDavid Sterritt
Danny Boyle's dark comedy has stylishly filmed moments, but overall it's a queasy blend of amusing, pointless, and sometimes quite nasty material. Read full review
50
NewsweekAndrea C. Basora
There is too much disconcerting and nasty violence in this light-hearted caper, but when it sticks to its romantic guns, it is often charming. Read full review
50
TV Guide MagazineMaitland McDonagh
It's seldom boring and always beautifully photographed, but it's also considerably less than satisfying, perhaps because its internal logic never comes into focus. Read full review
50
VarietyDerek Elley
Part kooky romance, part screwball comedy, part quirky fantasy and part Roadrunner cartoon, this is a movie that has everything except an involving storyline and characters. Read full review
50
New York Daily NewsDave Kehr
This aggressively "sincere" movie is without a single authentically lived moment a sense exaggerated by Brian Tufano's overcomposed cinematography, which imitates the glossy hollowness of fashion photographs. [24Oct1997 Pg 51]
40
Los Angeles TimesKenneth Turan
But the result is no more than a forced fable, a self-consciously smarty-pants concoction that is too clever by half and too pleased with itself in the bargain. Read full review
40
TimeRichard Schickel
But that's the thing about this movie. It never leaves well enough, or good enough, alone. It keeps looking--sometimes a little too hard--for ways to transform the ordinary into the discomfiting. Read full review
38
USA TodaySusan Wloszczyna
Flippantly hip without any solid laughs, Life strains to be the flick more offbeat. [24Oct1997 pg06.D]
30
Dallas ObserverPeter Rainer
What's missing is romance. Despite the engaging friskiness of its two stars, the film is romantically vapid. Watching it is like trying to warm up to a hologram. Read full review
25
San Francisco ChronicleEdward Guthmann
Boyle isn't the first British or European filmmaker to make his obligatory zesty American road movie (apparently it's a dream for anyone raised on American cinema), but knowing that doesn't make A Life Less Ordinary any less tiring or its numerous pilferings any less obvious or annoying. Read full review
25
San Francisco ExaminerBarbara Shulgasser
The big trouble with the movie is that it's difficult to care whether these two get together. Ultimately I did care - when I realized that their union would presumably represent a chance that the movie might end soon. Read full review
11
Austin ChronicleMarc Savlov
A Life Less Ordinary fails on so many levels it's nearly a textbook case of What Not to Do. Read full review
10
Washington PostStephen Hunter
The new film by the phenomenally talented Scots-English trio of director Danny Boyle, producer Andrew MacDonald and screenwriter John Hodge -- they did both "Shallow Grave" and "Trainspotting" -- is a failure so absolute and witless it deserves some kind of mention in the Hall of Lame. Read full review
0
The A.V. ClubKeith Phipps
At the very least, this film should hush those who insist that Diaz has talent beyond visual appeal, but it's unfair to single out her relatively minor offenses when there's so much else to hate about A Life Less Ordinary, an embarrassment for all concerned. Read full review
0
Entertainment WeeklyOwen Gleiberman
The real problem is the movie itself. The plot, with its interlocking contrivances, is like a machine that keeps trapping the actors in its gears. Since they aren't allowed to relate to each other on a simple human level, the spangly back-and-forth chemistry on which a romantic comedy depends is nowhere in sight. Read full review
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