A Life Less Ordinary

Not a complete write-off, the first US venture by the Trainspotting team is still a misfire. A screwball comedy, set in Utah, with a contemporary twist, it aims for a liberating sense of anything goes, but falters on a fantasy element that doesn't play. McGregor is Robert, a whimsical Scot, stuck in a menial job in an American corporation. Sacked, dumped and evicted in the same day, he abducts the boss's daughter Celine (Diaz), who soon takes the kidnapping in hand just to spite her dad. Meanwhile, the private detectives gunning to get her back, Hunter and Lindo, are in fact angels on a mission to ensure the couple fall for each other. Love through jeopardy is their game plan. McGregor is charming, a hopeless soft touch, easily outclassed in the brains department by the mercurial Diaz (a real livewire who jump starts the movie more than once). They make an attractive couple, doing very nicely, thanks, without the Almighty's contrived interventions - gratuitously violent scrapes which lurch the film into forced, mostly unfunny black comedy and even animation. The Coens meet Frank Capra - a mismatch made in heaven.