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A Life Less Ordinary

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United Kingdom, United States · 1997
Rated R · 1h 43m
Director Danny Boyle
Starring Ewan McGregor, Cameron Diaz, Holly Hunter, Delroy Lindo
Genre Fantasy, Comedy, Romance

A couple of angels, O'Reilly and Jackson, are sent to Earth to make sure that their next supervised love-connection succeeds. They follow Celine, a spoiled rich girl who has just accidentally shot a suitor and, due to a misunderstanding, is kidnapped by janitor Robert. Although Celine quickly frees herself, she stays with Robert for thrills. O'Reilly and Jackson pursue, hoping to unite the prospective lovers.

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What are critics saying?

25

San Francisco Examiner by Barbara 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.

25

San Francisco Chronicle by Edward 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.

60

The New York Times by Elvis 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.

63

ReelViews by James 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.

75

Rolling Stone by Peter 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.

50

The Globe and Mail (Toronto) by 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.

80

Salon by Stephanie 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.

10

Washington Post by Stephen 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.

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