First Impressions of The Life of Chuck

Despite its charming dance numbers, Mike Flanagan's feature film based on a Stephen King short story thinks it's so much more profound than it is.

The opening scenes of The Life of Chuck ring true to me. They focus, after all, on an English teacher—Marty Anderson, played by the warm and reassuring Chiwetel Ejiofor—who is trying to sustain his dedication to education while the world falls apart around him. And it is falling apart. The internet is down. Power outages are spreading. And ever bigger lights are threatening to go out.

Marty (Chiwetel Ejiofor_ contemplates a future with no Internet and, as one of his students’ parents laments in aguish, no PornHub.

I admit it—I’ve been struggling to stay focused on my classes too. It’s hard to convince myself sometimes that assignment deadlines and grades matter right now. So I felt like I might be looking in a mirror for a moment, here in the film’s provocative prologue.