37
Metascore
22 reviews · Provided by Metacritic.com
- 80SalonStephanie ZacharekSalonStephanie ZacharekGloriously 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.
- 75Rolling StonePeter TraversRolling StonePeter TraversThe 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.
- 63ReelViewsJames BerardinelliReelViewsJames BerardinelliFrom start to finish, A Life Less Ordinary feels like a group of sometimes amusing, sometimes clever, and sometimes tedious skits forced to fit together.
- 60The New York TimesJanet MaslinThe New York TimesJanet MaslinMr. 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.
- 50Chicago Sun-TimesRoger EbertChicago Sun-TimesRoger EbertThe film expends enormous energy to tell a story that is tedious and contrived.
- 50The Globe and Mail (Toronto)Rick GroenThe Globe and Mail (Toronto)Rick GroenHere, 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.
- 25San Francisco ChronicleEdward GuthmannSan Francisco ChronicleEdward GuthmannBoyle 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.
- 25San Francisco ExaminerBarbara ShulgasserSan Francisco ExaminerBarbara ShulgasserThe 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.
- 11Austin ChronicleMarc SavlovAustin ChronicleMarc SavlovA Life Less Ordinary fails on so many levels it's nearly a textbook case of What Not to Do.
- 10Washington PostStephen HunterWashington PostStephen HunterThe 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.