A LIFE LESS ORDINAIRY
Starring: Cameron Diaz, Ewan MacGregor

In a misguided attempt to sidle up to Tarantinoville, the 
Brit filmmaking team helmed by Danny Boyle (who swept us up 
in Scot junkie fever a year or so ago) attempt to give us 
Yanks a taste of our own tired medicine with this irrepressibly 
diverting but still hackneyed and cloying "girl with a gun/road 
movie" yarn.

By now that uniquely "American" genre has been done to 
death, but it's tired corpse still gets hauled out of the 
crypt and kicked around by auteur after auteur wishing to 
garner "hip" cred. Why Boyle and company, whove already 
established mountains of cred with TRAINSPOTTING want to 
play that reindeer game is beyond comprehension. 

What there is to like about this picture comes from watching 
a talented bunch of actors managing to work miracles with a 
hopelessly trite script. Diaz gets ample chance to show off 
a wide range of subtle comic talents along with nice cleavage, 
Ewan manages to transcend his cliched dialogue with an 
assortment of expressions that would make Harpo Marx proud, 
Holly Hunter has fun skimming her limitless bag of comedic 
tics as she revisits RAISING ARIZONA in the Leonard Smalls 
role, and a wide range of supporting actors are all given 
free range to really dig memorable turns out of the muck. 

The end impression is that the entire crew had a lot of fun 
shooting in a very relaxed, comraderly atmosphere. With a 
nice buzz and low expectations, this joviality should 
contaigue its way to your head, but watch out, when it tries 
for your heart, it's unabashedly awkward.  C+