I was kicking myself for missing out on this one. The critics were all raving about The Life of Chuck, but the film was such a humiliating box office bomb that it didn’t last long in theaters anyway. And now that I’ve finally seen it on DVD, I can tell you why.

First and foremost, this film does not want for talent. It was written/directed by Mike Flanagan, one of the most consistently and impressively solid filmmakers working today. Also, he’s adapting a Stephen King tale, coming off the instant classic we got the last time that happened. And that’s not even getting started on the cast.

The film was heavily marketed on the involvement of stars Tom Hiddleston, Chiwetel Ejiofor, Karen Gillan, Mia Sara, Carl Lumbly, Jacob Tremblay, Nick Offerman, and Mark Hamill. And that’s only skimming the surface. Keep scrolling down the cast list and you’ll find David Dastmalchian, Harvey Guillen, Matthew Lillard, Michael Trucco, Violet McGraw, Molly Quinn, Kate Siegel, Heather Langenkamp, the list goes on and on.

There are so many heavy hitters in this cast, and EVERY SINGLE ONE lights up the screen. No exaggeration, every last character in this movie with a line of dialogue gets a memorable and/or iconic moment. I’ve never seen anything like it, not at this volume. This kind of casting is what Wes Anderson is known for, and it outdid him by a landslide!

That said, there’s a reason why this cast is so stacked: They barely get any screen time. With only a handful of exceptions, pretty much every actor in this picture is only limited to a cameo or a few brief minutes. Hell, Tom Hiddleston is supposed to be the headliner, and half his screentime is taken up by a dance number. An extended, breathtaking, showstopping, career-defining dance number with Annalise Basso.

(Side note: It’s been fascinating and sweetly endearing to watch Basso grow up over the course of Flanagan’s filmography.)

With all of that said, what’s the plot? Great question. What the hell even is this plot?

The film is broken up into three acts that play in reverse order. It starts at the end and works backwards. And I really do mean it starts at The End — like, the end of the whole freaking universe. We open with the goddamn apocalypse, then smash cut to nine months prior, and everything is perfectly fine. Granted, the reverse-chronological storytelling makes for some neat setups/payoffs while illustrating the cyclical nature of time. But it blows the concept of “rising action” all to hell and leads to a wet thud climax.

This is a tough one to sufficiently describe or grade because it’s more interested in engaging with big ideas and themes, rather than telling a coherent story. Case in point: The universe ends at the exact same time our eponymous Chuck prematurely dies of brain cancer. And it’s strongly suggested that the fate of the universe is directly tied to the fate of this random stranger. As a statement about how we contain multitudes, such that the death of a person is effectively the death of an entire world, it makes a kind of metaphorical sense. But in terms of the literal story, it never even tries to make sense.

Personally, I was most impressed with the recurring motifs of mathematics and dance. The aforementioned Hiddleston/Basso dance sequence helps to illustrate the joy and beauty of being alive. And a spellbinding monologue from Mark Hamill illustrates how mathematics are what make the universe run. Math is the “how” and dance is the “why”.

More importantly, dancing is emblematic of the more artistic pursuits that everybody loves, but doesn’t value enough to provide a stable career. Math is emblematic of the opposite, those professions that are boring on the surface yet vital to life. But in the last half-hour or so, we get some genuinely transcendent moments that conflate the two. Moments that find the mathematics in dancing and vice versa. These moments show the truth that there is no difference between the beautiful and the mundane — they’re all equally necessary to keep the world moving.

The Life of Chuck has a lot to say about humankind’s place in the universe, finding hope and purpose in a bleak and directionless world, how to live every moment to the fullest, and so on and so forth. The problem is that all these huge ideas are more or less rolled up into so many metaphors and dumped into a stew without much of any logic or connective tissue to organize them all into a coherent story. As to whether that’s a bug or a feature, reasonable minds can disagree.

There are some staggering performances here from a great many supremely talented actors, and Flanagan directs the hell out of this movie. Even so, I have my doubts that so much razzle-dazzle will be enough to sustain this movie through a second or third viewing. I’m grateful to see that Flanagan already has his next gig lined up, writing/directing a movie for DC Studios headlining Clayface, of all characters. He really is a superbly talented filmmaker, I hope he keeps making movies that nobody else could think of, and it’s a relief to know the inevitable box office failure of this movie won’t slow him down all that much.

It’s little wonder the studios didn’t know how to sell this movie, but I’m open to the possibility that a fanbase could figure that out further down the line. Reasonable minds can disagree on whether the film is good or bad (depending heavily on your tolerance for sacrificing cogent storytelling for artistic metaphors), but it’s undeniably interesting. I don’t know that I would’ve recommended this for a big-screen viewing, but I’m glad I saw it on DVD. I can recommend that much.