Up in Heaven - which, in A Life Less Ordinary looks like an over-exposed 1930s police station - Gabriel has orders from The Big Man - what the world needs now is Love and lots of it. Specifically, it would be considered a spiritual plus if Robert - Ewan McGregor - an underachieving office cleaner, got together with Celine - Cameron Diaz - the spoilt brat daughter of his boss, Ian Holm. So an unlikely pair of angels, Holly Hunter and Delroy Lindo, are despatched to Earth to bring about this union, with complicated results.
Fans of Shallow Grave and Trainspotting, the earlier films made by the Scottish team of director Danny Boyle, writer John Hodge and producer Andrew MacDonald, will probably be dismayed by their third effort, which would be better titled a film more ordinary. This is a completely misconceived tribute to cinema classics like It`s A Wonderful Life and A Matter Of Life And Death, films in which angels were able to alter the course of events of life in a post-war world (both films were made in 1946). The angels in those films were charming and funny; Hunter and Lindo are charmless and dumb. Nor is it possible to get worked up in the central romance, which seems a more than usually pointless one, though Cameron Diaz at least shows again she has star quality.
The big question is why? Why did this talented Scottish team come to America to make this utterly nondescript film? A Life Less Ordinary, given its high expectations, is the disappointment of the year.
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