Review: Tom Hiddleston leads the cosmic puzzle that is ‘Life of Chuck’

Life of Chuck, adapted from a Stephen King novella, tells the story of one man’s life in reverse—from a global collapse to a childhood dance. With Tom Hiddleston leading, it’s an emotional, ambitious film full of poetry, philosophy, and joy

‘Life of Chuck’ is a peculiar movie with grandiose ambitions. It teases out a cosmic mystery about life and some guy named Charles Krantz (Tom Hiddleston) in a story told in reverse chronological order that gets smaller and smaller with each act. This is a story that begins with the apocalypse and ends with a middle school dance.

It’s based on a novella by Stephen King and adapted by filmmaker Mike Flanagan. This, however, is not a horror movie, though there are spooky elements laden with ominous ambiguity. There are also big, joyful dance numbers, a fair share of cynical jokes, earnest conversations about the end of the world and plenty of references to Walt Whitman’s ‘Song of Myself’. That is most movingly conveyed in a scene with a teacher (Kate Siegel) and a middle school aged Chuck (Benjamin Pajak) on the last day of school.

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‘Life of Chuck’ wants to make you think, feel, laugh and cry about the most mundane of characters. The internet has gone out. Parts of California have drifted into the Pacific. Environmental disasters rage. Suicides are skyrocketing. Hail Mary life decisions are being made.

In the third act, which opens the film, Hiddleston is everywhere — on billboards and television ads, cheerily smiling in a nondescript grey suit, coffee cup in one hand, pencil in another.

Marty (Chiwetel Ejiofor) is just trying to do his job as a school teacher. Everyone — a maintenance guy (Matthew Lillard), a funeral director (Carl Lumbly) — seems to want to philosophise about what’s going on. In act two, a grown Chuck (Hiddleston) dances in the street in a joyful six-minute sequence. In act one, he’s a kid (Pajak) who has lost both his parents and unborn sister in a car accident and is living with his grandparents (Mark Hamill and Mia Sara).

This is a film with a big heart that has already made a significant impact on some moviegoers.