Dan Fogelman
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Connections, in both directions
Abby, a graduate student, makes this banal observation her college thesis while she’s being romantically pursued by Will (Oscar Isaac), an erstwhile screenwriter whose Pulp Fiction-ish scribbles make for a confusingly self-referential and violent start to the film.
He proposes at a costume party where they're dressed as John Travolta and Uma Thurman in Pulp Fiction; soon they have a baby on the way and a sweet little dog named Fuckface, just so it's clear they have an edge and are not merely swooning saps.
There’s a few early references to “Pulp Fiction” in a present context and characters in different chapters define their relationship to Bob Dylan music in a present/past way.
That might explain why college sweethearts Will (Oscar Isaac) and Abby (Olivia Wilde) begin their story dressed up as characters from Tarantino's "Pulp Fiction."
As such, we enjoy flashbacks of his romance with Wilde, filled with poetic declarations of love, “Pulp Fiction” costume parties and a dog named “F*** Face” (you won’t see that on NBC, folks!).
Complete with dated Pulp Fiction references, monologues about Bob Dylan’s comeback album, and more misapplied quirk than, well, an episode of This Is Us.
As in Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu’s 2007 drama Babel , everything is interrelated.
It essentially brings nothing new to the table, and Fogelman’s vision doesn’t break new ground, considering the cinematic catalogue has already explored this concept with films such as Babel, Vantage Point and even the Oscar-winning Crash (the less said about that film, the better) with various degrees of success.
Think Crash or Babel , movies trying so hard to Be About Something they come across as maudlin.
An unholy combination of “Rashomon” and “Babel,” it strings together seemingly disparate plotlines into one massive, messy tableau of (sorry, has to be done) life itself, a life that zings toward the warm embrace of death.
This is one of those Crash, Babel, or Magnolia-esque dramas where all of the seemingly disparate stories are connected in some type of way.
They're all cogs in a "we're all connected (by senseless death, trauma, and self-hate; also baby-making)" construct that feels more artificial and inorganic by far than the most grotesquely contrived trash of the 2000s hyperlink narrative fad; it feels like a version of the already-not-very-good 2006 Babel that was made by serial killers.
Among them, as a star-struck young hotel desk clerk, is "Whiplash" alum Melissa Benoist, who has a warming smile that's a perfect generational bookend to Bening's.
It’s there that he finds friendship with a valet (Josh Peck, “Red Dawn”) and a desk clerk (Melissa Benoist, “Whiplash”) and an unlikely romance with a whip-smart hotel manager (Annette Bening).
Even the bit parts go to the girl from “Whiplash” (Melissa Benoist), who steals scenes as a hotel worker, and Nick Offerman, who opens the movie as a reporter.
The cast is full of sharp little turns by Melissa Benoist — the girlfriend in “Whiplash” and a future Supergirl — and Josh Peck and Katarina Cas, the latter playing Danny’s bubblehead user of a fiancée.
The first follows Danny’s stay at a Hilton in New Jersey, where he plays matchmaker for a valet attendant and front desk clerk (Whiplash’s Melissa Benoist) and flirts with and ultimately befriends hotel manager Mary (Annette Bening).
Danny's exuberant appreciation for valet boy Nicky (Josh Peck, "The Wackness") turns into matchmaking when he meets college aged reception clerk Jamie (Melissa Benoist, TV's 'Glee,' "Whiplash"), but it's hotel manager Mary Sinclair (Annette Bening, "The Kids Are All Right") who gets him thinking about more age appropriate romance for himself.
This part of the film includes a nod to the 1946 classic It’s a Wonderful Life when Will goes back in time to see random moments in the past that will likely shape his future.
It’s actually funny that Fogelman enjoys referencing Tarantino so much in this movie because the script kills off more characters than Reservoir Dogs .
But this story is just the first of several morbid twists in a multi-generational, multi-chapter saga of schmaltz, set into motion by a Manhattan bus accident, à la Kenneth Lonergan’s Margaret .
The idea of romance through the years, or just the idea of focusing on multiple interrelated stories, is nothing new, having been seen in films ranging from the beloved Christmas classic Love, Actually or the more trite Valentine’s Day to those more thought-provoking in nature, such as Paul Thomas Anderson‘s Magnolia or Alejandro G. Iñárritu‘s Amores Perros .
On a scale of “Magnolia” to “Crash” to “Collateral Beauty,” this one is closer to the lattermost.
This is one of those Crash, Babel, or Magnolia-esque dramas where all of the seemingly disparate stories are connected in some type of way.
But be warned, make sure you bring your Kleenex with you, because “Life Itself” makes “Manchester by the Sea” look like the second coming of “Airplane!”
(Bizarrely, the central theme is that of Lonergan’s follow-up, Manchester By The Sea : the inheritance of grief.)
Throughout, we are treated to changes in point of view; skips back and forth in space and time; multiple versions of Bob Dylan’s Time Out Of Mind track “Make You Feel My Love” (just like in, uh, the 1998 Sandra Bullock vehicle Hope Floats ) and discussions of said song; cutesy-poo dramedy hijinks involving Pulp Fiction -themed Halloween costumes and a dog named Fuckface; and some of the least convincing depictions of comparative literary studies or punk rebellion in the history of cinema.
Everything is tied together at tale's end through the new character of Elena (Lorenza Izzo, "Knock Knock," "The Green Inferno"), using the device of a book reading to bookend the film's literary themes.
Considering Will and Abby’s fondness for 1990s cinema ( Pulp Fiction , Beautiful Girls and The Professional are all directly referenced), one can assume their romance and marriage takes place during that decade.
Everything is tied together at tale's end through the new character of Elena (Lorenza Izzo, "Knock Knock," "The Green Inferno"), using the device of a book reading to bookend the film's literary themes.
Some characters just crossing the street are smacked out of existence with the same stinging swiftness that brutally befell Brad Pitt in Meet Joe Black .
I’m avoiding obvious spoilers where I can, but anyone who has seen a film in the wake of Paul Haggis’ Crash knows precisely where Life Itself will be heading.
It essentially brings nothing new to the table, and Fogelman’s vision doesn’t break new ground, considering the cinematic catalogue has already explored this concept with films such as Babel, Vantage Point and even the Oscar-winning Crash (the less said about that film, the better) with various degrees of success.
Think Crash or Babel , movies trying so hard to Be About Something they come across as maudlin.
On a scale of “Magnolia” to “Crash” to “Collateral Beauty,” this one is closer to the lattermost.
This is one of those Crash, Babel, or Magnolia-esque dramas where all of the seemingly disparate stories are connected in some type of way.
Is it a bit much that the tone shifting gambit feels like it was stolen from a Final Destination film?
Death happens so flippantly that you might be confused into thinking this is a Final Destination film.
Perhaps worst of all is the way the film begins, with a cheerful, unwitting radio therapist (Annette Bening) getting slammed by a bus on the street, “Final Destination”-style, and dying.
Considering Will and Abby’s fondness for 1990s cinema ( Pulp Fiction , Beautiful Girls and The Professional are all directly referenced), one can assume their romance and marriage takes place during that decade.
In a vacuum, and in the hands of a surer director, this could work: Steven Soderbergh’s The Informant! was a master class in this.
It essentially brings nothing new to the table, and Fogelman’s vision doesn’t break new ground, considering the cinematic catalogue has already explored this concept with films such as Babel, Vantage Point and even the Oscar-winning Crash (the less said about that film, the better) with various degrees of success.
“A Good Person” seems to belong to a uniquely Dan Fogelman-esque subgenre of hyper sincere melodrama that sometimes clicks (“This Is Us”) and other times does not (“Life Itself”).
Divided into chapters, the movie opens with a movie-within-a-movie that includes a near 10-second description on the type of “gay” a person is, read by Samuel L. Jackson as if he’s in Do the Right Thing .