I went into The Life of Chuck expecting to cry. That’s what I’d been primed for, after Mike Flanagan’s feature adaptation of Stephen King novella of the same name earned fulsome praise when it premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival last year. “Profound,” “heartwarming,” and “masterpiece” were a few of the words thrown around, and I went into the film with high expectations and no idea of what it was about. In the end, I left puzzled and on the verge of an existential crisis — both because of the film’s ambitious, non-chronological depiction of key moments in a man’s life, and because my eyes were completely dry. Was everyone else wrong? I wondered, or even worse: am I a little dead inside?
That’s the kind of litmus test The Life of Chuck is — a nakedly sincere, overwhelming sentimental ode to the mysteries of the universe and the incandescent beauty of life. You’d have to have a heart of stone to not be a little moved by it, especially in its strange, almost surreal approach to its story. Or maybe its unabashed sentimentality is just corny and old-fashioned. Depending on your own level of cynicism, and maybe even the mood you’re in when you watch this, either of these reactions can be true. But there’s no denying that Life of Chuck will earn some kind of reaction out of you.
