Don Reviews "The Life Of Chuck"

The Life of Chuck is based on a novella by Stephen King, and if you know him, you know that this is no ordinary tale.  Mike Flanagan (who directed King’s sequel to The Shining in Doctor Sleep) directs, and if you know HIS work, you know that this will be no ordinary film.

As the film begins, “Act Three” takes place where a small nondescript town starts to see strange things happening around them.  Marty Anderson (Chiwetel Ejiofor) is a middle school teacher that is trying to make sense of it all while his estranged ex-wife, Felicia Gordon (Karen Gillian), deals with the phenomenon at the ER where she works as business picks up sharply.  All of it seems to revolve around a bunch of signs saluting “Chuck Krantz” for thirty-nine great years, but there is still no understanding of the “why”.  As Acts Two and One unfold, the mysterious accountant’s identity comes into focus… or does it?

There are multiple actors who portray Chuck as his story is told, and they all carried certain traits that tied them all together well.  When it comes to the rest of the cast, I think my favorite of them is the work of “The Pocket Queen” Taylor Gordon: all I am going to say is “drum scene”.  I also enjoyed the work of Nick Offerman as the narrator, whose tone and inflection is a huge highlight here.

This story is very basic at its core, and the fact that it is actually told in reverse may be a clue as to how things are going to go.  It runs a little under two hours, and even though a few scenes could have been shortened or cut, it is not bad overall.  The first third is very strange, keeping me wondering what was going on much like Pink Floyd’s The Wall, but as it went on, the whole story started to come together, which made me wonder why they showed some of the prior scenes.  My big issue is that it just got too weird, and for some people it may take either watching this film multiple times just to pick up on all of it or maybe even talking with someone else who had seen it to compare what they got out of it.  There is a lot of symbolism, and while some of it really is genius, I found it a little too hard to get at first.  Even with all of this, I will still recommend The Life of Chuck to be seen at a second run theater.