The Films of Dan Fogelman

Danny Collins

Life Itself (September 21/18)

Written and directed by Dan Fogelman, Life Itself follows New York City-based couple Will (Oscar Isaac) and Abby (Olivia Wilde) as they await the birth of their first child - with their story eventually paving the way for further episodes involving a wide variety of disparate characters (including Olivia Cooke's Dylan, Antonio Banderas' Mr. Saccione, and Annette Bening's Cait). It's hard to deny that Life Itself gets off to a fairly rough start, as the movie begins with a silly and needlessly self-referential stretch involving Samuel L. Jackson - with the ineffectiveness of this opening instantly setting a too-clever-for-its-own-good tone that proves fairly disastrous. Filmmaker Fogelman's subsequent efforts at drawing the viewer into an episodic, twist-laden narrative generally fall flat, as there's ultimately an undercurrent of artificiality running through the proceedings that's reflected most keenly in the assortment of less-than-convincing characters - which, in turn, prevents one from wholeheartedly (or even partially) embracing their ongoing exploits. And although Fogelman delivers a very small handful of compelling sequences throughout (eg Abby's background is explored, Mr. Saccione tells a story about his family, etc), Life Itself progresses into a seriously hit-and-miss midsection that's increasingly more miss than hit - thus, perhaps unsurprisingly, ensuring that the movie's very earnest final stretch is simply unable to pack the emotional punch that Fogelman has obviously intended. The film's failure is ultimately made all-the-more-disappointing given the strength of the movie's myriad of talented performers, with a sporadic sprinkling of positive attributes unable, in the end, to compensate for a script that feels like an entire television season's worth of story crammed into an awkward and ungainly two-hour picture.