Tom Hiddleston
“THE LIFE OF CHUCK” My rating: A-(Various PPV platforms)
111 minutes | MPAA rating: R
Mike Flanagan’s “The Life of Chuck” provides the 10 most joyful minutes of cinema I’ve seen in all of 2025.
Which is not bad for a movie that starts out depicting the end of the world.
“…Chuck” is a departure for writer/director Flanagan, possibly our best dispenser of supernatural horror (“The Haunting of Hill House,” “Midnight Mass,” both Netflix miniseries); but then it is based on what is probably the most atypical story ever penned by Stephen King.
I mean, we’re talking a weirdly-structured but deeply moving meditation on the meaning of life.
You know somebody’s tinkering with the time/space continuum when the opening titles tell us that the yarn begins with Chapter III.
Here we meet Marty Anderson (Chiwetel Ejiofor), a middle school teacher struggling (as is everybody else) with the rapid collapse of civilization. First the Internet went down. Now cell phones aren’t working. TV stations are going off the air one by one, but not before announcing that most of Northern California has fallen into the Pacific.
There’s still electricity, but nobody knows how long the juice will keep flowing.
With classes cancelled, Marty wanders the streets of his town, now cluttered with abandoned cars. He has a conversation with a funeral director (Carl Lumbly) about a blitz of billboards, banners and TV/radio commercials that have appeared overnight. These declare “Charles Krantz. 39 Great Years! Thanks, Chuck!” and feature a photo of Chuck (Tom Hiddleston), a pleasant-looking guy wearing a business suit and spectacles. Maybe Chuck is retiring from his job, though he doesn’t look nearly old enough.
And anyway, the world is ending.
A big chunk of Chapter III centers on Marty’s efforts to reconnect with his ex, Felicia (Karen Gillan), a nurse now jobless since all the high-tech medical machines in her hospital stopped working. Reunited, Marty and Felicia sit in her back yard watching the stars blink out one by one.
Next up is Chapter II. We find Chuck (Hiddleston) attending a conference for accountants. On a stroll through the city center he is confronted by a busking street drummer (Taylor Gordon). Listening to the percussive symphony she generates, the buttoned-down Chuck begins swaying tot he music.
Then he starts doing a few dance steps. Before long he’s grabbed the hand of a passer-by (Annalise Basso) and together they put on an impromptu display of big band terpsichorean razzamatazz that draws a cheering crowd.
It’s a heart-in-your-throat “Singin’ in the Rain” kind of moment. Pure movie magic. (Much love to Mandy Moore’s spectacular choreography).
Mark Hamill, Benjamin Pajak
Then it’s on to Chapter I, which depicts Chuck’s childhood (as you’ve gathered by now, “The Life of Chuck” unfolds in reverse order). Orphaned by a car accident, young Chuck (he’s depicted as a middle schooler by the excellent Benjamin Pajak) is being raised by his grandparents (Mark Hamill and Mia Sara).
(Uh, wait a minute. Mia Sara. Wasn’t she Ferris Bueller’s squeeze only a couple of years back? Surely she can’t be anybody’s grandma.)
Anyway, this segment examines Chuck’s relationship with his loving grandparents, and his discovery of dance in an after-school club. The kid’s a whiz…before long he’s the talk of the prom for cutting a rug with a girl two years his senior.
Once again, the dance sequence is magic. But what kind of career is dance for a red-blooded American boy? No, Chuck will grow up to study something more practical, like accounting. But he’ll never forget the thrill of his body moving effortlessly to the music.
“…Chuck” bites off a big chew by attempting (in reverse) to depict one man’s life. What we come to realize is that Chapter III is actually unfolding in the head of a dying man. Chapters I and II tell us how he got there, while introducing figures (Marty, Felicia, the funeral director) who will appear in his end-of-life reverie.
The film has been so deftly directed and acted (even from the unseen Nick Offerman, whose narration provides just the right taste of detached observation) that more than a few veiwers will find themselves in tears.
| Robert W. Butler
Butler's Cinema Scene 