At some point in the career of far too many a rising writer-director, it seems, especially those who lean into the “writer” portion of their portfolio, a demon alights on their shoulder and whispers, “You should really make a generations-spanning interlocking-stories narrative that says something deep and elusive about the human condition.” Pausing to see how the idea is going down, the imp may then add, “Just think of the cast you could get!”“Life Itself” stars Oscar Isaac, Olivia Wilde, Annette Bening, Antonio Banderas, Laia Costa, Olivia Cooke, Mandy Patinkin, Jean Smart, and more, and is the brainchild of writer-director Dan Fogelman, his second directorial feature after “Danny Collins” and the first to come on the heels of his highly successful NBC series “This Is Us.” It is sentimental and sprawling, which are not necessarily bad things, but also manipulative and contrived, which very much are.
And though the
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