Movie review: 'Life Itself' a tearfully contrived soap opera

<h3 class="briefHead">"Life Itself" - ★ ★ </h3>

If Quentin Tarantino wanted to direct a schmaltzy soap opera, he might have made "Life Itself," but without the shameless sentiment and with a beefed up body count.

Director Dan Fogelman assuredly had Tarantino in mind when he constructed "Life Itself" as five intertwined, overlapping chapters, each brandishing a Hallmark card message of hope and light through the darkest times of sadness and suffering.

That might explain why college sweethearts Will (Oscar Isaac) and Abby (Olivia Wilde) begin their story dressed up as characters from Tarantino's "Pulp Fiction."

But, why does "Life Itself" begin with Samuel L. Jackson narrating what appears to be a movie set that he interrupts?

And whose female voice periodically breaks into the story to deliver those narrated info bulletins?

Fret not. All will be revealed in Chapter 5.

In "Life Itself" (no connection to Chicago film critic Roger Ebert's autobiography and documentary with the same title), family members die in car wrecks, kids become abandoned by suicidal or deserting parents, rebellious teens get tattoos and the nicest people develop cancer.

No matter, Fogelman's resilient, surviving characters assure us you can bet your bottom dollar that the sun will come out tomorrow, even if you don't sing it.

In Chapter 1, a bearded Will talks to a psychiatrist (Annette Bening) about his beloved Abby. (Shrink sessions, a lazy narrative device, enable the effortless dumping of exposition, and easily reveal character motivations and problems without an actor needing to actually demonstrate them.)

In subsequent chapters, we see how Will and Abby's daughter Dylan (Olivia Cooke), named after the multi-referenced musician Bob Dylan, grows up to be a wild, damaged New York soul.

In Spain, a rich olive farm owner named Saccione (Antonio Banderas) rudely stares out a window while subjecting his best worker, Javier (Sergio Peris-Mencheta), to his boring, never-ending life story.

When finished, Saccione promotes the surprisingly awake Javier and gives him a house on the property, enabling the honest man to marry his beloved Isabel (Laia Costa) and start a family.

Javier and Isabel's son Rodrigo (Alex Monner), winds up attending a university in New York, even though he experienced a terrible childhood trauma during a Big Apple family vacation.

In between these events, Mandy Patinkin and Jean Smart play Will's well-matched parents who tie narrative threads together.

Fogelman, whose domestic NBC TV series "This is Us" has earned critical success and popular appeal, proves himself to be a skilled manipulator of emotions.

(At a screening of "Life Itself" last week, I heard serious, unrelenting sobbing. If the public loves this drama and critics don't, it will be another case of conflicting criteria: critics judge the movie on what it says and how it says it; the public judges the movie on how it makes them feel.)

"Life Itself" boasts a glossy look and charismatic cast carrying out the contrived pieces in Fogelman's talky puzzle.

Significantly, Will and Abby re-enact "Pulp Fiction" where John Travolta jams a syringe of adrenaline straight into Uma Thurman's heart.

A few scenes in "Life Itself" strive for the same effect. But they forget to use adrenaline.

<b>Starring:</b> Oscar Isaac, Olivia Wilde, Mandy Patinkin, Annette Bening, Antonio Banderas

<b>Directed by:</b> Dan Fogelman

<b>Other:</b> An Amazon Studios release. Rated R for drug use, language, sexual references, violence. 117 minutes