.jpeg "The Book is Better Than the Movie")
As with many past book-to-film adaptations, The Storied Life of A.J. Fikry is yet another case of the book being definitively better than the movie. This isn’t, of course, to say that the film by director Hans Canosa and writer Gabrielle Zevin is necessarily bad. In fact, Canosa delivers an adequate adaptation of the original novel, incidentally written by Zevin as well, effectively bottling the key sensibilities that made her book the New York Times Bestseller that it was when it was published in 2015 and turning it into a deeply emotional portrait of life and love.
Starring Kunal Nayyar, Lucy Hale, Christina Hendricks, and David Arquette, among others, The Storied Life of A.J. Fikry follows a bookstore owner (the titular Fikry) whose life hasn’t turned out the way he had initially planned. In addition to still grieving his wife’s death from a few years ago, his store, Island Books, is seeing an exponential decline in sales. His only saving grace is a rare collection of poems by Edgar Allan Poe that he plans to sell for a significant sum; however, it gets stolen one night. To further complicate matters, the most unexpected thing is left in his store: a two-year-old girl. Though initially unsure about taking her in, Fikry ultimately finds his stride as an adoptive father and, by extension, discovers a new lease on life and all the beauty it has to offer.
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Between Fikry’s budding romance with Amelia (Hale), a sales rep from Knightley Press who makes occasional work visits to Island Books, Ismay’s (Hendricks) secrets regarding certain events that impact Fikry’s life, not to mention her later romance with Arquette’s Lambiase (a town cop who strikes up a friendship with Fikry and a love for reading), there’s a lot going on in The Storied Life of A.J. Fikry. In some ways, mixing the flourishes of romance and comedy with the seriousness of loss, pain, and even small-town crime makes for a narratively rich film. However, in other, more detrimental ways, that is also the film’s major flaw: there’s a lot of ground to cover, to the point that it feels overstuffed.
Zevin’s Script Gets to the Root of Human Existence
Zevin’s original novel initially won readers over because of her precise and evocative prose. Naturally as such, The Storied Life of A.J. Fikry was always going to be large source material-shoes to fill for anyone who chose to adapt it. It’ll be a relief to fans of the novel, then, to know that Zevin’s signature way with words bleeds into her script. You, of course, needn’t be a fan of the book to appreciate the way in which her script, like her novel, is a surgical dissection of the human heart, at once slicing through and uncovering the softest parts of existence.
In fact, as you can see in our exclusive clip here, The Storied Life of A.J. Fikry is a solid adaptation when it is able to sit still and focus on the smaller moments, the conversations between characters, the breaths between words. Indeed, Zevin’s characters could easily be a veritable reflection of and to us all — Fikry, a seemingly broken man who gets another chance; Amelia, a steadfast romantic through and through; Ismay, a woman shouldering the burden of regret; and Lambiase, someone who chooses to find joy in all things — if only the film didn’t feel preoccupied with trying to be a sweeping emotional epic. Between the Hallmark-y score and certain narrative beats that, in literary form, may read as engrossing, but, on-screen, err towards the overly sugary, Fikry can’t seem to find its place between the grounded and the grandiose.
Related: Exclusive: The Storied Life of A.J. Fikry Cast Discusses the Charming Adaptation
Depth and Chemistry in the Cast’s Performances
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If anything, The Storied Life of A.J. Fikry can claim itself to be a triumphant showcase for its talented cast. Carrying the film as the fiercely intelligent, yet hardened and curmudgeon-y A.J. Fikry, Nayyar is better than ever. He deftly balances Fikry’s pain and light, offering a performance that is disarming and vulnerable. Likewise, Hale is perfect as Amelia, and her chemistry with Nayyar is ineffable.
Hendrick’s time on-screen doesn’t really kick in until the later acts of the film, but she nonetheless turns in a dedicated performance as a woman with the weight of the world on her shoulders — even with the slightest shift of her eye, she communicates volumes. And as Lambiase, Arquette brings such warmth and levity, it’s hard to believe he’s a cop.
The Storied Life of A.J. Fikry will likely not be for everyone, but if there’s anything to take away after wading through the emotional excess of the film, it’s the valiance with which filmmakers like Canosa and writers like Zevin assert that stories about who we really are, are still worth telling. Especially at time when the cinematic landscape largely favors spectacle, violence, and fantasy, there’s value in stories that choose to focus on what’s real and in front of us. The Storied Life of A.J. Fikry doesn’t quite hit all of its notes, but when it does, it sings.
Distributed by Vertical Entertainment, The Storied Life of A.J. Fikry is available in theaters on October 7.
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