The Life of Chuck is a Crowd-Pleasing Original | Movie Review

Hi, it's Brian. Welcome to The Awards Contender, and today we are talking The Life of Chuck, which I saw in my first full day at the Toronto Film Festival. It just won the TIFF People's Choice Award, and this is a very big deal if you have been following the Oscars for the last decade plus, and how the People's Choice Award winners at TIFF go on to do at the ceremony the last 12 films to win this prize at the Toronto Film Festival have gone on to receive an Oscar nomination for Best Picture. Like, so this is important for The Life of Chuck. A movie, to be honest, I didn't really see as an Oscar contender, even though I very much liked it. This latest film from Mike Flanagan, like one of my favorites, Mike Flanagan, who every year, it seems, has something worth seeing, whether it's a film or a TV project, this latest from him isn't a horror film, really. Like, there's a couple parts that have some suspense. It is a genre bender, a total original that has elements of drama, fantasy, science fiction, coming of age. This movie is a wild ride, filled with surprises and filled with an amazing ensemble cast, most of whom were there for the very cool premier screening at TIFF. Like, Stephen King was in the audience, Mike Flanagan introduced the movie, of course, and then the cast that came out after this film ended. I was like, oh my god, they get everybody at TIFF. Holy cow. There was definitely a buzz in the audience that night that we had seen something special. I feel like others loved the movie more than I did. This is a positive review. I very much liked it, but I did have some problems with the opening 45 minutes or so. It took me a while to really vibe with this story and get into the narrative. The Life of Chuck is based on the novella by Stephen King as part of his anthology book, If It Bleeds. I believe that book has four stories in it. The Life of Chuck is one of them, and because it's not scary, really, I wouldn't have assumed Mike Flanagan would have wanted to adapt this into a film, but as he talked about in his introduction at TIFF, like, he read this story right at the beginning of the pandemic, and this story brought him to tears, and he knew he wanted to make it. Of course, he had adapted other Stephen King projects before, like Gerald's Game, like Doctor Sleep, and this is his first adaptation of a King story that doesn't go for the terror. It really goes for the heartstrings instead, and it was such a pleasure, I would say, watching the second half of The Life of Chuck. Seeing Flanagan really latch on to the human story and not try to scare us every five to ten minutes, like tell a dramatic story filled with tension and heart and lots of singing and dancing. That is not something I expected to see in a Mike Flanagan film, but it's here, and it is glorious. The Life of Chuck is told in three stories backwards. We start with Part 3, move to Part 2, and then Part 1. Part 3 and Part 2 have their pleasures, but this film did not get off on a good start for me. The first part, Part 3, is very strange and downbeats, and you don't really know what's happening at all. It does make sense once you get to the end of the movie. You're like, oh, okay, that's what's happening in Part 3. That's why all of these weird things were going down, but you don't know that until the end. So, like, the first 20 to 30 minutes of The Life of Chuck, I was like, I don't really like this very much. I don't know where this is going, and I'm not that interested in where it's going, and then we go to Part 2, where we get the most, really, of Tom Hiddleston in this film. Even though he's in most of the main stills that have been released, Hiddleston is not in this movie very much. Do not expect him to be, like, the lead actor of this film. Part 2 is the smallest part, and it's amusing, and there's some singing and dancing here, too, which also gets a payoff once you reach the end of the movie. But again, in Part 2, I was like, what? This just feels very self-contained, and when we started Part 1, I was, like, thinking this was going to be a two and a half star movie out of five. I was right in the middle. I admired some of what Flanagan was doing, but I was like, hmm, this feels kind of a miss for me. And then this film does something very few movies do, I would say. It really gets way, way, way better in the second half. Part 1, which is at least an hour, I would say, maybe longer, maybe an hour and 15, everything about Part 1 I loved. Like, if the whole movie had been Part 1, and somehow at the end they had brought in elements of Part 2 and Part 3, this would be a four star review, maybe even four and a half. Like, I really started vibing with this after a while, and getting to know the young Chuck, who has had a horrific family tragedy, and is just trying to get through his days, go to school, find something he's interested in. He realizes he is very interested in song and dance, in performing, and one of my favorite things in this movie is the performance by young Benjamin Pajak. I don't think I've seen him in anything before. He is a very talented child actor, so appealing, he really does tug on your heart strings, super charming and relatable, and he is a big piece of why I think Part 1 is so great. And then you have that huge ensemble cast around him. Like, every couple of scenes there's a great actor, who often stumbles in for just a few minutes, and then we never see them again. There's Matthew Lillard, Kate Siegel, Mia Sara from Ferris Bueller's Day Off is wonderful in this, and Heather Langenkamp, like Nancy from A Nightmare on Elm Street herself, gets one fantastic scene in this movie. I was really loving her cameo. And if there is one person in the life of Chuck who could get into the award scene, I don't think he can get like an Oscar nomination for Best Supporting Actor, but his name could get floated around a little bit. He has at least two very good, dramatic, memorable moments in the second half, and that is Mark Hamill. Mark Hamill, playing much older than he really is in real life, is fantastic in this movie. There is this one scene where he goes off on his grandson Chuck wanting to be a musical performer, an artist. He talks about how it's much more important to learn math, to be an accountant, do something that people need in life, and it's such a heartbreaking scene. You really do feel Chuck just kind of slinking down in his seats, not wanting to be combative with his grandfather, but wanting to do what he loves. So the cast is great in this. It's well directed by Mike Flanagan. You can tell it's Flanagan, even though it's not scary. There's still his visual touches. You can feel his presence in this movie. It's a faithful adaptation of the Stephen King novella. It's got a satisfying ending that ties up all the loose narrative threads, where as I said, the first two parts, I was like, where is this going? What is happening here? Even though the three stories are very well connected, it does kind of play like an anthology film in a way. Like visually, part three doesn't really resemble part two, and then part one really does kind of start off the story in a way, and I am doubtful that general audiences, like someone who doesn't know anything about this and just puts it on, is necessarily going to love this, recommend it to all their friends. You kind of have to stick it out in this movie. You have to give it an hour to breathe, and then it really starts to work, and then you really get involved in the story. But I could see a lot of general audience members, a lot of awards voters too, kind of scratching their heads at the 30-minute point, the 40-minute point, not knowing what to make of this. So I'm kind of surprised, to be honest, that The Life of Chuck won the People's Choice Award at TIFF. Is this going to be an Oscar contender? I don't think so, and I know that's a because, as I said, the last 12 films to win this prize at TIFF has gone on to be nominated for the Best Picture Oscar. So it would make sense to put The Life of Chuck in your Best Picture predictions. Like, I can see a lot of people doing that. If this movie gets one Oscar nomination, I don't think it's in Best Picture. I think it slips into Best Adapted Screenplay. Like, I think it could maybe get in there if there's enough support for this film, if it does indeed open by the end of the year. As of this recording, I don't even think there's distribution yet for The Life of Chuck. So we'll see what happens if it comes out in November-December from a good distributor, if the is more enthusiastic than I'm expecting, maybe it could break into Adapted Screenplay. And because of the stats of the TIFF People's Choice Award, you can't completely rule out the possibility that The Life of Chuck can get into Best Picture at the Oscars, but I am not seeing that right now. Having watched the movie, I just don't think this one is an awards film, and that's okay. It doesn't have to be. My prediction right now is that The Life of Chuck gets zero Oscar nominations, and it's not because I think it's a bad movie. It's a good movie. There's a lot to admire about it. I just don't think awards voters are really going to go for this one when you have projects like The Brutalist, and Anora, and Amelia Perez, and so many films we're going to be talking about a lot over the next few months. I just don't see The Life of Chuck getting there. That's my prediction. Other people might disagree with me. And hey, if The Life of Chuck gets into Best Picture, Best Adapted Screenplay at the Oscars, I guess I will just hang my head in shame, right? I don't know. But I'm not seeing it right now. I don't think The Life of Chuck is an Oscar movie. But overall, I liked it. I think it's definitely worth seeing. If you're a fan of Stephen King adaptations, if you're a fan of Mike Flanagan's work, you have to check this one out. And with that outstanding ensemble cast, and a really emotionally rich and engaging second half, I do think The Life of Chuck is a pretty good movie. Not great, but good. I give The Life of Chuck a 7 out of 10. Thanks so much for watching and subscribing, and I will be back with more reviews from the Toronto Film Festival. I will see you next time at the Awards Contender.