Film Review – Life Itself

While writer/director Dan Fogelman has made other movies (2015’s “Danny Collins”), one would never know that by simply watching his latest endeavor, “Life Itself.” Best known as the creator of the NBC show, “This is Us,” Fogelman’s small screen addiction to melodrama doesn’t sit well in multiplexes, attempting to replicate the smashing fates formula that’s served him well on network television. Playing like a T.V. pilot that badly wants to be taken seriously as an R-rated inspection of human connections, “Life Itself” makes the crazy creative decision to be completely unlikable. Downright odious at times. It’s enough for Fogelman to be manipulative, which every frame of this picture is, but it’s another to be completely tone-deaf with characterization, turning the film into a twisted game where the audience is actively rooting for death to win in the end.  Read the rest at Blu-ray.com