Over time, we have grown to view Danny Boyle as something of an establishment of British cinema – a solid and reliable filmmaker who has a very distinct approach to the storytelling process, and a lot of technical skill to make his films consistently entertaining and insightful. However, he’s also an example of a filmmaker who allowed time and experience to soften his more jagged edges – he remains a wonderful director, but his recent efforts have been far more safe and solid than the works he was producing earlier in his career. We need to remember that there was a time when he was viewed as something of a counterculture revolutionary as far as his artistic perspective would allow, which is why many have grown to be quite confused at his third directorial outing, the fascinating A Life Less Ordinary, a film that has many tremendous ideas, but which ultimately has the unenviable task of following Shallow Grave and Trainspotting in the director’s body of work, the latter in particular being one of the biggest sensations to come out of the United Kingdom at the time, and a film that remains a cultural touchstone in ways that Boyle has perhaps struggled to return to over the years, despite active efforts that show his attempts to tackle such a subversive style of filmmaking yet again. Not necessarily a film that Boyle is going to be remembered for, nor one that has any particularly notable qualities, A Life Less Ordinary does have a few unique merits that make it a worthwhile endeavour, albeit one that is far from as strong as his previous two films and which still contains quite a few shortcomings that are difficult to overlook, but which we do nonetheless based on our desire to see such an original concept flourish. Whether or not it is successful is entirely a matter of opinion, which is why A Life Less Ordinary is often perceived as one of Boyle’s most contentious and unconventional projects to date.

Based purely on its premise, A Life Less Ordinary already promises to be somewhat worthwhile, since it takes its cues from films such as Here Comes Mr Jordan, A Matter of Life and Death and Heaven Can Wait, focusing on the blurring of reality with a vaguely fantastical perspective, focusing on the seemingly fragile membrane that exists between the mortal world and the afterlife. The general concept is quite simple: a pair of angels are notified that they have been underperforming on their duties to make sure every human experiences true love, and are given one final assignment to prove themselves – if they fail, they will be forced to remain in the mortal world indefinitely. Their targets are a spoiled heiress and the volatile former janitor who kidnaps her and holds her for ransom, which makes the mission even more complicated than it was at the outset. Boyle is clearly inspired by some of his cinematic forerunners (particularly Powell and Pressburger, since this film is very much in-line with their aforementioned masterpiece that is very similar in concept), but he was also quite inexperienced in terms of handling the material, since despite having an incredible idea, there are some shortcomings that weigh it down. However, on a purely conceptual level, its difficult to not at least admire A Life Less Ordinary for the sheer gumption with which it was made – Boyle’s style was still developing, but his voice was present from the start, and a darkly comedic combination of romance and psychological thriller, set in the ambiguous space between heaven and earth, seems to be audacious enough to hold our attention, and we certainly find ourselves thorough encapsulated by the initial ideas that we find scattered throughout the film. The themes that Boyle intends to explore also point towards an artistic maturity that is very much in line with a young, ambitious filmmaker seeking to make something more complex but not losing the revolutionary spark that brought him to the public’s attention in the first place.

Admirable but imperfect is perhaps the best potential description for this film, as well as perhaps the most generous, based on how it sometimes starts to spiral into something less convincing after a while. Ultimately, the problems with this film can collectively be defined by the realization that it didn’t quite know exactly what it wanted to be, and as a result it devolves into a jumble of ideas that seem like they could make for a brilliant film, but don’t match the potential that existed at the outset. Most of this is contained in the tone – based on the works that inspired it, you’d expect A Life Less Ordinary to be a more lightweight, effortless film that uses humour more gently and compellingly. However, this is also a film made by someone who had just made two of the bleakest and most nihilistic dark comedies of the era, and he was certainly not equipped to change course so suddenly, nor did he seem to be particularly interested in such an approach. The result is a film that is extremely jagged in terms of tone, and not in a way that points towards it being particularly interesting or worthy of our time. It is made even worse towards the end, where the story derails and becomes falsely sentimental, shoehorning an artificial shift in tone that never once feels particularly authentic, and instead makes the conclusion even cheaper. Caught somewhere between subversive and sentimental, the film never constructs a meaningful identity, and almost feels as if two very different stories were being told in tandem, compressed into this unconvincing and slightly unsatisfying comedy that never feels particularly effective, especially not when it comes time to develop on the central premise, which has potential that is unfortunately wasted by a director whose ideas were good, but who also lacked the nuance necessary to tell such a story, at least in terms of infusing it with layers.

The boost in stature that he was given by his two previous films meant that Boyle was highly in demand and would likely be able to bring on several very exciting actors who were raring to collaborate with such a deeply original directorial voice. A Life Less Ordinary features a reunion with Ewan McGregor, who had been given his breakthrough performance by Boyle in Trainspotting the year before, and who plays a slightly similar role in the form of a vaguely disturbed but good-natured young man who simply wants to succeed, but finds his social awkwardness coming in conflict with the outside world. He is paired with Cameron Diaz, who was also on the precipice of a breakthrough, having done a solid amount of work over the past couple of years, but who was still finding her place in the industry. The pair are wonderful and brings a lot of genuine chemistry to a film that desperately needed it. The same cannot be said for the other pairing in the film, which involves Delroy Lindo and Holly Hunter, who play the angels tasked with bringing the two protagonists together. Both Lindo and Hunter are beyond gifted actors, and their presence here brings a much-needed sense of gravitas to the film, but Boyle simply does not know how to use them. There exists an earlier version of this story in which they were the leads, which is obvious throughout the film, which attempts to give them an arc, which is never quite substantial enough to be properly developed. It also doesn’t help that they are reconfigured to be the villains of the story (which is already too tenuous in terms of the role they play – the entire story could have been rewritten to exclude these characters, who are oddly not necessary based on what they are given to do, and how their interactions with the protagonists are by far the weakest parts of the film), which does an immense disservice to both actors. Lindo does his best, but he struggles to stand alongside Hunter, who is giving one of her most inexplicably broad and perhaps even actively quite confusing performances, trying to be the comedic relief, but going too far over the top to be effective. A great cast is mostly squandered with this film, which quite simply did not know what it wanted to be at the best of times.

A Life Less Ordinary stands in a very strange place in the director’s career, since it came after both his widely-acclaimed directorial debut and the film that would define him as a director, and he struggles to maintain the same distinct energy and command of the craft in his third directorial outing, which is notable throughout this film. Its not weak in terms of how it is directed, but the writing leaves a lot to be desired, which would probably require us to look at what screenwriter John Hodge brought to the film (he had previously written Boyle’s first two films, so it certainly wasn’t a case of the film being written by someone who wasn’t capable of matching Boyle’s vision), which is that he had a good idea, but not enough awareness of how to tell such a broad story. A film like A Life Less Ordinary is not designed to be a gritty, callous dark comedy – it can infuse these elements into the story, but it mostly needs to take a more bold approach, and Boyle’s tendency to consistently default to the same nihilistic style doesn’t allow the film to flourish in any meaningful way, leading to quite an unnerving and unconvincing comedy. The emotions are often heavy-handed (likely to compensate for the more jagged tone of the earlier segments), and the character development is extremely weak, which is not appropriate for a film with this much potential. As a whole, A Life Less Ordinary feels like a bundle of missed opportunities from a director with a very precise perspective, and while it has its moments of brilliance, it is mostly a middling effort, and it isn’t difficult to understand why it wasn’t Boyle’s major mainstream debut, and it would still be a few more years before he fully became cherished, since everything about this film indicates that it is made by a gifted filmmaker that simply needed to develop his vision further before attempting something this ambitious. It is sufficiently entertaining, but constantly leaves us desiring more, and its inability to realise its true potential is perhaps the most unfortunate aspect of this entire film, which could have been so much better with slightly more work.