So, here was a mystery: I saw the poster for The Life of Chuck at the movie theater whenever I went, but as often as I go, I never saw a trailer for it. I do stream most of my TV ad-free, but I never saw a single ad for the movie there either. How could that be? Sure, I doubt anyone who isn’t a Marvel fan really knows who top-billed actor Tom Hiddleston is, but the cast was full of, if not big name famous actors, at least recognizable ones. And it was based on a Stephen King story? And adapted by writer/director Mike Flanagan? He’s, like, the guy to go to for King adaptations these days. How did I not hear anything at all about this one?
As it is, my girlfriend is a big Hiddleston fan, so getting her to go with me to find out what it was about wasn’t that hard to do.
I’m going to be very careful with what I say here because I went into this one basically cold, and I think the movie works better that way. Narrated by Nick Offerman, the movie is told in three acts but in reverse order. Act Three, such as it is, shows the world and the universe as a whole ending. High school teacher Marty (Chiwetel Ejiofor) is watching the world slowly fall apart while he and his ex-wife Felicia (Karen Gillan) seem to be edging back together, at least to be with each other when everything ends. The world’s end seems to be everything slowly coming apart, but there are these messages all over, thanking the mysterious Chuck (Hiddleston) for a job well done.
So, who’s Chuck? The other two acts explain that, and I’d rather not say more than that. This is a Flanagan piece, so it’s safe to say a number of the actors who have appeared in Flanagan’s other works, but essentially, this is a movie to tell the audience who Chuck is and why he mattered to the world that was coming to an end, and that is all I am going to say about the plot.
So, here’s the thing: Hiddleston plays the most important character in the movie, but he’s not in it very much, and the scenes he does appear in, he says very little. That’s actually OK. When Hiddleston is on-screen, he’s showing why Chuck matters. His big scene allows Hiddleston to show off some good dance moves. But he’s not unique here. Many of the actors don’t have a lot of dialogue, but when they do speak, what they say matters. Mark Hamill, as Chuck’s grandfather, actually has a great monologue about why math matters at one point, and Flanagan’s wife Kate Siegel puts some real warmth to explain a concept to a young Chuck at one point for her only real scene.
That, in essence, is what The Life of Chuck is about: life and why one person matters, how we can choose to live our lives, and what happens at the end of everything. And that’s all I want to say about the story itself. I somewhat wish the movie had been a little deeper, but it is very much a King story, and I wouldn’t be at all surprised to find that much of Offerman’s dialogue, given he probably has the most dialogue of anyone in the movie, was lifted directly from King’s original story. But it was a rather beautiful story told well, and that’s all that matters at the end.
Grade: A-
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