The Life of Chuck (2025)

Score: 3 / 5

Melancholic and sentimentally bittersweet, The Life of Chuck is not the kind of film I usually enjoy. Movies with oddly specific character actors in their ensemble cast based around a sort of "live, laugh, love" thematic premise don't do it for me in comedies or dramas. With rare exceptions, stories musing on the afterlife in order to reaffirm spiritual awareness in the present feel too manipulative and triggering for me to be either emotionally provocative or hope-inspiring. And while I've not yet read the eponymous novel by Stephen King, it's quite low on my list of his works for the same reason. King can do amazing spiritually-resounding stories -- just look at The Shawshank Redemption, The Green Mile, and Dolores Claiborne, among many more -- so it's not that I doubt his writerly craft. And I certainly didn't doubt Flanagan's extraordinary skills as director or writer. But this one worked for me, even if I doubt I'll revisit it anytime soon.

I should note here that, while I will avoid many spoilers, to discuss this movie is to spoil it. So if you're at all interested in a cozy, existentially curious speculative piece of date night vibes with the characteristics already mentioned, give The Life of Chuck a watch. It may not be your cuppa, but you'll be glad you tasted it. It's even a solid choice for your next family movie night, if you've got younger ones; they may get squirrelly or confused during a few lengthier scenes of heightened dialogue, but it'll offer cool opportunities to discuss the less tangible things in life with your loved ones.

While I've already named sentimentality as a pillar of this film, it would not do to ignore its resistance to wallowing. Indeed, the film staunchly refuses, in true Flanagan fashion, to condescend its messaging or cater to audiences in a way that feels dumbed down. We're engaged via multiple senses and cerebral appeals, Flanagan inviting us into his stylized world where one man's choice to live life to the fullest not only positively impacts the people around him but in fact melds him with the fabric of the universe. Over time -- the film is told in three sections presented in nonlinear narrative -- the titular Chuck navigates both childhood and adulthood, and his imminent death after a life well-lived seems to be bound up with the death of the universe. Weird? You bet. But cool as heck to think about? Also yes. And utterly horrifying when the stars start blinking out of existence? Trust and believe that that'll be my next nightmare.

Flanagan's approach to this film feels musical, both regarding the satisfying rhythms and movements of its thematic and dramatic beats and regarding its central scene of Chuck dancing to a busking drummer before pulling a young woman up and dancing with her. The extended scene is stunning and fun, riveting in its unbridled sense of joy, presented with considerable artistry from all departments involved. The film may never quite get us to a point of weeping -- which I say pointedly, as I cry in a lot of movies -- but I had a bigass smile on my face for most of its runtime. 

Its large ensemble cast is uniformly solid in what they do, but there's not a whole lot of featured moments for any of them to shine. Mark Hamill and Tom Hiddleston are excellent, Chiwetel Ejiofor and Karen Gillan have nice chemistry, and Carl Lumbly and Jacob Tremblay sell their scenes with gusto. I would add that Annalise Basso makes a case for herself as a leading actress in a big way, and I hope to see more of her on the big screen. Almost like those anthology holiday romances in which all the couples are somehow related to each other as everyone learns to love, actually, this film avoids integral or featured performances in favor of more or less meaningful encounters between characters. This helps provide some flesh to the film as folks like Matthew Lillard, Kate Siegel, Rahul Kohli, David Dastmalchian, Heather Langenkamp, Harvey Guillen, Violet McGraw, and Q'orianka Kilcher pop in for a scene or two each. 

Yet, for all this, it's hard to describe or even label the film. It pulls from the likes of affirming holiday classics like It's a Wonderful Life and A Christmas Carol, for sure, but it also pulls ideas from Being There and Amelie and Footloose and Nine Days while never feeling like anything else out there. In the first act, I was wildly excited to see what would happen; it felt like the kind of sci-fi drama that Denis Villeneuve or a younger Christopher Nolan might make. But each act has wildly shifting focal points and tones -- even within individual scenes -- and the film never recovers from the thrilling end of its first act. At least not for me. No amount of amazing dancing or stories about ghosts in the attic or Walt Whitman quotes was able to bring me back from distraction by that first act. So while I had fun dancing through The Life of Chuck (which, actually, is an odd title, since we only really see him as a kid and again as a middle-aged man before his death) along with its unequivocally beautiful spectacle, I still don't know quite what to do with it. And that seems to be very much not its intended effect.