Less is More

Can't remember why I queued up A Life Less Ordinary (1997). Maybe because it's a rom-com directed by Danny Boyle, and Blank Check podcast has just been doing a Danny Boyle series. Whatever, this wasn't quite my cup of tea but I'm glad I ordered.

It starts in heaven, which looks like an clean whitewashed sleazy police station - male angels are cops, female angels are the hookers sitting on their desks. Why not? Chief Dan Hedeya tells angles Delroy Lindo and Holly Hunter that their record for fostering lifelong relationships is not good and they need to form a solid couple - or it's the Bad Place (Earth).

On Earth, LA specifically, Cameron Diaz is a spoiled rich girl lounging by her pool and shooting apples off the head of her father's butler. She also rejects dentist Stanley Tucci's marriage proposal, unless he agrees to the William Tell routine. He does but flinches just as she shoots and gets it through the hand.

At her father's corporate headquarters, Ewan McGregor is a slacking janitor. He tells his co-workers that he's writing a novel - one so obvious that they guess the ending and most of the middle before he finishes telling them the set up. He's fired, to be replaced by a cleaning robot. When he tells his bartender girlfriend, she tells him she's leaving him for her aerobics instructor. When he gets home, he finds that he has been evicted by the Firm but Fair Collections Agency, run by Lindo and Hunter.

The next guy, McGregor goes back to the company to demand his job back, and bursts in on a meeting between Diaz and her father (Ian Holm) - he's threatening her with a job. When Holm calls security, McGregor tussles with them and grabs a gun. When he's disarmed, Diaz kicks it back to him, and eventually gets him to take her hostage.

He thinks he's kidnapping her, but she kind of seems to be the brains of the operation. For example, she notes that he hasn't even asked for a ransom. When he does, he's so polite and deferential that he lets Holm talk right over him. Later attempts don't go any better. It looks like Diaz is going to have to do everything if she wants to get enough money to be independent of her father.

Meanwhile, Lindo and Hunter of the old Firm but Fair Agency get the contract to recover Diaz for Holm. They decide that the best way to get Diaz and McGregor together is the old Jeopardy ploy - put them in danger. So Diaz and McGregor get put in a lot of danger, some by angels, some by Diaz's wildness, some by McGregor's fecklessness. So, happily ever after? No, not even a love letter ploy seems to work. This one's going to take divine intervention.

This was fun, and sometimes a little dangerous. I love Cameron Diaz, just for her bubbly personalty and Goldie Hawn smile. Her kooky rich girl persona here isn't a shallow as it could have been, but is still a bit manic-pixie. I understand McGregor is a fine actors, but, like in Down with Love, his attractiveness and charm elude me. Here, with his spiky, floppy hair and 80's shirts, he just doesn't look that impressive. Maybe Diaz just wants to mother him. 

I guess I'd say this was an ordinary rom-com, but adding Lindo and Hunter as sleazy angels ups the rating at least a half-point. It's better than ordinary, actually.