Film reviews: The Life of Chuck, How to Train Your Dragon, and From the World of John Wick: Ballerina

The Life of Chuck

Directed by Mike Flanagan (R)

★★★

The latest Stephen King adaptation is "one of the year's best movies," said Odie Henderson in The Boston Globe. "I don't know how it will fare at the box office, but I can see it becoming a beloved favorite in the same way The Shawshank Redemption ultimately did." It recounts the life story of one ordinary man, opening with him lying on his deathbed amid the world's end-times before twice turning back the clock—once to catch him during a boring business trip and once to his youth. Like Shawshank, this tearjerker "really makes you think about life and the things we take for granted."

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Maybe so, if you're moved by "touchy-feely platitudes," said David Fear in Rolling Stone. Halfway in, with Tom Hiddleston portraying the middle-aged Chuck, the movie unleashes a terrific impromptu dance sequence that's "destined to be memed in perpetuity." Otherwise, it's the sort of parable about the wonder of each human life that "makes you leave the theater angry at being so gracelessly manipulated and jerked around." Its closing childhood stretch subjects viewers to "sub-­Spielberg sentimentality" with "an extra side of schmaltz." Clearly, the movie is going to divide audiences, said Katie Rife in IndieWire. But there's "something touching" about its message that every person carries inside "a galaxy of experiences" that bursts into being only once. "Viewers with a sweet tooth may find themselves thoroughly charmed by Chuck's dorky earnestness."

How to Train Your Dragon

Directed by Dean DeBlois (PG)

★★

The new live-action version of How to Train Your Dragon "doesn't do a single thing better than the original," said Brian Tallerico in RogerEbert.com. While "not quite as soulless" as some of Disney's live-action updates, DreamWorks' remake of its acclaimed 2010 animated hit is "a film that's constantly painting inside the lines." Though Dean DeBlois, who also co-­directed the original film, brings "traces of dedicated craft" to the effort, the new Dragon is "content creation, not filmmaking"—an exercise driven purely by the profit motive.

If you've seen the original, "you already know the story," said Ethan Anderton in SlashFilm. Hiccup, an awkward Viking teenager, defies norms when he befriends a dragon instead of killing it, and "the script lifts every single memorable moment, down to the exact phrasing." That faithfulness does no favors for young actor Mason Thames, who's "undeniably charming" as Hiccup but isn't the misfit the character should be. Still, the presence of human actors brings added emotional punch to Hiccup's clash with his chieftain father, played again by Gerard Butler, and to the young hero's blossoming romance with Nico Parker's Astrid. You can question the film's "If it ain't broke, don't fix it," approach, said Brian Truitt in USA Today. But the story's strong characters are "fleshed out in new ways," the dragons "really pop as digital creations," and watching Hiccup riding atop Toothless, his flying dragon, is "like the exhilaration of a theme-park flight simulator matched with the adrenaline rush of Top Gun."

From the World of John Wick: Ballerina

Directed by Len Wiseman (R)

★★

The first John Wick spin-off turns out to be "a wildly uneven viewing experience," said Alison Willmore in NYMag.com. The movie's second half proves "so much better than the first half that it might as well be a whole different movie." And maybe it is, given that one of the franchise's original directors, Chad Stahelski, apparently stepped in and reshot multiple scenes before the film's release. Ana de Armas stars as an assassin who's out to avenge her father's death, and given little to play in the early going, the actress "defaults to dour." But the movie eventually "gets funny around her," and she throws herself into plenty of fight sequences that are simultaneously "absurd and thrilling and gorgeous."

Ballerina is set after the events of the third of the first four Wick movies, and it has "just enough Keanu Reeves to remind you what franchise you're watching," said Stephanie Zacharek in Time. While the bland script ensures that the usually lively de Armas "doesn't really resonate here as a performer," she handles the action scenes well, and the picture's "cartoonish brutality" proves "cathartic." Suspense and storytelling craft are in short supply, said Kyle Smith in The Wall Street Journal. "The film really has only one goal: to look cool, by presenting a catalog of interesting ways someone might be violently killed." If you need nothing more, "Ballerina has all you require."