Tom Hiddleston, right, plays the titular Chuck, a lonely accountant who meets bookstore clerk Janice, played by Annalise Basso.The Associated Press
The Life of Chuck
Directed by Mike Flanagan
Written by Mike Flanagan, based on the short story by Stephen King
Starring Tom Hiddleston, Chiwetel Ejiofor and Karen Gillan
Classification PG; 111 minutes
Opens in theatres June 13
Somewhere along the journey from Singin’ in the Rain to Wicked, movies forgot how to dance. What was once one of the medium’s most reliable pleasures – a full-bodied, well-choreographed, toe-tapping dance sequence – has today largely been reduced to something ungainly and awkward, with so many contemporary filmmakers (Wicked’s Jon M. Chu is a primary offender, though certainly not alone) failing to capture the kind of wide-angle delights of a body in motion.
And then there’s Chuck.
About midway through the new and somewhat unclassifiable film The Life of Chuck, director Mike Flanagan and veteran dancer and choreographer Mandy Moore (not that one) deliver a genuine show-stopper: a lush and delicate dance sequence that reminds audiences just how far a little soft shoe can go.
The scene’s power is defined not only by its technical prowess, but by its intimacy. The moment in which a lonely accountant named Chuck (Tom Hiddleston) dances on the street of a busy Anytown, USA, promenade – his slick moves attracting the attention of a recently heartbroken bookstore clerk named Janice (Annalise Basso) – is relatively small in scale. The crowd that gathers around to watch the pair does not spontaneously join in, the scene erupting into a needlessly feverish spectacle. Rather, Flanagan and Moore ensure that our attention remains laser-focused on only Hiddleston and Basso, the two performers engaged in a tiny human drama of movement and music.
It is a perfect moment in a film that is otherwise defined by its imperfections – which is not necessarily a knock, as so much of The Life of Chuck feels endearing despite its slips. This is a movie that, like its central dance, aims to please. (It’s exceedingly easy to see why the film won the People’s Choice Award at this past fall’s Toronto International Film Festival.)
Flanagan’s third adaptation of a Stephen King work – following 2017’s Gerald’s Game and 2019’s Doctor Sleep – The Life of Chuck is more Stand By Me than The Shining, a life-affirming tale dripping with both the author’s trademark sentimentality and exceptional layers of narrative intrigue. Nearly impossible to describe without completely ruining its mostly clever structure, the story is split into three parts, told backward.
Mia Sara and Mark Hamill play a couple taking care of their young grandchild after he loses his parents.The Associated Press
The first (but really, the third) follows a lonely schoolteacher named Marty (Chiwetel Ejiofor), who is trying to soldier on despite the entire Earth being on the verge of collapse. The internet has been down for months, environmental disasters are ravaging various parts of the world, and then there are these weird billboards that have been popping up all over his hometown, seemingly celebrating the retirement of a guy named Charles Krantz: “39 Great Years! Thanks Chuck!”
But this isn’t really Marty’s film, as Flanagan then moves onto the second piece of the puzzle, which pivots around the aforementioned duet between Chuck and Janice. And, afterward, a third act that tries – and is only partially successful – to connect it all through the eyes of a young boy (Benjamin Pajak) who is living with his kindly grandparents (Mark Hamill and Mia Sara) after losing his parents in a car accident.
Save one egregiously grating appearance from Karen Gillan as Marty’s ex-wife – a performance that seems teleported in from an even sappier melodrama – every member of Flanagan’s cast is perfectly calibrated here. So much so that it feels wrong that everyone’s characters appear flittingly, sometimes popping in and out for too-brief moments. Hamill in particular has never been better as a kind but cynical patriarch, while Carl Lumbly (so poorly misused in this year’s Captain America sequel) knocks you down with the shortest of monologues.
Yet the film’s narrative and thematic trickery is hard to embrace – you can too easily feel the structural and emotional screws turning, the “meaning” of The Life of Chuck locking into place just so. More than likely, Flanagan’s film will leave you a sobbing mess. But there is a sense of betrayal, too – it’s almost too easy to wring those tears. Take this dance, sure, but bring the Kleenex, too.
