Film Review: "The Life of Chuck" (2024)

It can't be bad if Stephen King wrote it, right?

The film promos looked great. Now what?

"You'd be surprised how much it costs to look this cheap."

— Dolly Parton

I critique films by budget. This movie spent lots of money to look super indie. The acting salaries’ themselves could probably finance who knows how many better indie films, and the Stephen King money could probably finance the budget of a mid sized American town’s fiscal year.

I’m not the biggest Stephen King fan, and I’m not a hater either. I tend to land somewhere in the middle on this man, who gave us the iconic The Shining and these days is famous for, however you feel about his views, writing opinions on social media. Almost like how an entire generation of people thinks Jessica Simpson is the woman with the clothes, never knowing her as a performer.

So when I watched The Life of Chuck and later learned it was based on one of his novellas, my reaction made immediate sense to me. It’s there. It’s hanging on. Not much more. What’s the thing young people used to say? “I’m not impressed.”

This isn’t a bad film, terrible film, no. It isn’t poorly made or acted. It means well. It’s gentle, polite, and clearly earnest. But it also isn’t a great film or something I would watch again. There is no fun casual viewing of it, and there isn’t anything intellectual to it where I watch it in slow motion. It isn’t film as art. And there’s a lot missing where something substantial should be.

To its credit, the movie doesn’t rely on vulgarity or cheap storytelling, a relief to me. It doesn’t shout, doesn’t chase shock value, and doesn’t insult the audience. In fact, there’s a quiet relief in watching something that feels like a real movie again after enduring years of all that with the actors acting, scenes breathing, those ideas attempting to exist.

But then the obvious question arises to you as you sit there, like, “Huh?” Where is the plot? THIS MOVIE HAS NO PLOT. Assuming since it is based on a novella, King’s novella does not either.

The film unfolds in long scenes that seem to promise meaning but rarely deliver it and could really use serious editing. The adaptation of this would have been a great time to redo the storytelling because hey, folks, it’s a movie, not a book. Ah, the cult of Stephen King, or insert writer here, means you can’t do that, can you? Moments stretch on without revelations. As an audience member, you keep waiting for something to click, for a thread to emerge that ties one scene to the next, but it never quite happens. Nothing in this movie is connected to the other bits, and do not tell me the universe falling apart is a big deal at the beginning because it plays such a small role in the entire plot, it could be edited out and have the same movie.

There’s dancing. If this were a musical, I could happily settle in for extended movements that never get the cutting room floor. Bring it on. But here, the dancing doesn’t connect to anything else in the film. In fact, very little connects to anything else. The storytelling feels disjointed, like fragments of broken glass from different funhouse mirrors placed side by side and poorly glued back.

The acting, to be fair, is lovely. Everyone involved is clearly doing what they were hired for. But it’s hard not to notice that many of these actors come from the Marvel ecosystem, and it’s equally hard not to wonder whether this film would exist in its current form if the script weren’t attached to the name Stephen King. Would the same script, from an unknown writer, have drawn this casting and marketing push? Never. Funny how people overlook everything when it comes from an established “brand.” Stephen King now is a brand. Insert any writer, possibly a pre-trans discussion J.K. Rowling, and their brands are untouchable. They could turn in Mother Goose, and someone would adapt it to film with a huge push. To be fair, a horror mystery thriller take on a cinema Mother Goose tale might be a draw for me, so let’s say, they could turn in disjointed Mother Goose rhymes with uncut scenes of nothingness and talking about jibberish, and people would watch it.

To which I’m sure someone will say, “Nicole is jealous.” No, I’m not. I am viewing this from a business side that you get to a point where a person’s career goes full blown Emperor’s New Clothes on us. You become a brand. All of us hope our careers reach the point of our work speaking to lots of people without that losing perception end of it. I am happy when people excel.

Throughout the film, you’re given the sense that something here is going to matter. A detail. A moment. A gesture. But nothing ever quite does. Nothing important happens, and very little interesting happens either outside of some charming dancing.

By the end, you’re left wondering what the point was meant to be. It doesn’t seem interested in being funny like a 90’s guilty pleasure film, joyful, a little Love Actually dreamy, or mysterious. It isn’t sexy or stuffy romantic. What is this? It gestures toward meaning without committing to ANYTHING.

Then comes a strange supernatural element near the end, an event that feels as though it should reframe everything that came before it, like whoa. It adds no real value. The film can’t decide whether it wants to be a meditation on the quiet dignity of an ordinary life or a fully supernatural tale. It chooses neither, and as a result, you’re like, “Only Stephen King could get away with this unscathed.”

The result is something like flat soda, oh, not offensive, not undrinkable, mildly disappointing but it’s there.