Critic Reviews
67
Metascore
Generally Favorable
positive
25(60%)
mixed
14(33%)
negative
3(7%)
Showing 42 Critic Reviews
Jun 4, 2025
100
It’s one of this year’s best movies. 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. Like that classic, this one really makes you think about life and the things we take for granted.
Jun 5, 2025
100
This is a musical movie, not just because it features musical numbers. It weaves its spell not merely by what it does, but how it moves, and what it chooses to say or not say, and when it decides to proceed to the next scene.
Jun 5, 2025
100
If you want to go for the really scary stuff, there are plenty of other King movies for that. “Chuck” instead is something truly special, a moving fantasy of a life well lived and no dance step left untaken.
Jun 11, 2025
91
It is engaging, warm, touching, and sincere without being cloying or manipulative.
Sep 12, 2024
90
Dancing between the ruminative and the revelatory, it never succumbs to being maudlin or cloying. The Life of Chuck is a modern fable told with the deftness of a fairy tale, with the sheer exuberance of a musical while exuding the same sense of wonder one gets staring up at the heavens.
Sep 12, 2024
90
It’s not only his best film yet, but it’s the work he’s been building up to over his entire career.
Jun 6, 2025
90
Instead, The Life of Chuck is one of the most insightful and moving philosophical films ever made, a movie that's as much Kierkegaard as it is King.
Jun 5, 2025
89
The Life of Chuck is not so much about raging at the dying of the light but about how we embrace the inevitability of death and the wonder of what comes before. It’s blockbuster metaphysics, a twinkle in the eye of the infinite.
Jun 12, 2025
88
Adapted by Flanagan from King’s 2020 novella, this meditation on the bittersweet beauty of the human condition is sweeping in sentiment and surgical in intent.
Jun 16, 2025
88
Watching The Life of Chuck, I was inspired to remember how wonderful it can be to find a movie that offers the thrill of discovery and the comfort of real emotions. That’s such a rare combination these days and when a film unlocks the secret, it deserves to be seen and lauded for the accomplishment.
