Back in 2014, writer Gabrielle Zevin’s slim novel, The Storied Life of A.J. Fikry became a modest hit. A book essentially about the joy of reading, its whimsical tone and sprawling narrative delighted book lovers. So, of course, it’s now been adapted into a film.
Kunal Nayyar (who most viewers will recognize from The Big Bang Theory) plays Fikry, the owner of a failing bookstore on a remote Massachusetts island who starts the novel as a grieving widower. However, his life changes when a troubled young woman leaves her toddler, Maya (Charlotte Thanh Theresin), in his care. As A.J. raises Maya over the next dozen or so years, he opens up again, finding a friend in the town’s Police Chief Lambiase (David Arquette) and a budding romance with Amy (Lucy Hale), a sales rep from a small publishing house who visits him seasonally. That plot description alone already sounds like a lot to cover—and that’s without mentioning subplots about A.J.’s sister-in-law, Ismay (Christina Hendricks) and her famous novelist husband, Daniel Parrish (Scott Foley).
In novel form, Zevin, who also adapted the screenplay, gets away with so many plot threads by weaving them in a way that makes even their most farfetched intersections feel like fate’s grand design. And maybe if the book had been adapted into a miniseries, those same plot points would have had the room to breathe. However, condensed into a single, 105-minute film, neither Zevin, director Hans Canosa or his game cast can make the narrative feel like anything but a cloying Lifetime melodrama.
The trouble starts early, the second the overly cutesy score by Starr Parodi and Jeff Eden Fair begins to play. Indeed, everything from the costumes, to the quaint production design for Alice Island, to the bright cinematography emphasizes how adorable this world is. Those elements alone will likely alienate a lot of viewers. However, those who can accept the picturesque views of lighthouses and the artfully disheveled look of A.J.’s bookstore will eventually be rewarded.
For one, the performances are universally strong. Nayyar makes A.J.’s grumpiness and straightforwardness if not always charming, certainly funny and earned enough to make us root for him. Hale’s Amy is charming in her earnestness, easy to understand as someone A.J. would desire as well as delivering real emotional weight whenever the plot takes more serious turns. The pair really only gets two major scenes upon which to build their characters’ romance–an awkward dinner in a Moby Dick-themed restaurant and a spontaneous date that goes from casual conversation to morning after at lightning speed–and yet there’s enough chemistry there to make it work.
The same goes for Hendricks and Arquette, whose best moment comes late in the film. Prompted by Arquette’s Lambiase asking what she likes in books, Hendricks’s Ismay launches into a wide-ranging monologue: women who wear hats to protect their fair skin, suitcases with stickers on them, faraway places, etc. At that point in the film, after seeing the course Ismay’s life has taken, that monologue serves as an eloquent summation of all the little disappointments and aborted dreams the character has experienced. It’s a stunning moment of truth delivered remarkably well by Hendricks and received just as well by Arquette, whose silent reactions register all the hurt and yearning Lambiase picks up in that speech.
Truthfully, the film has many such small moments of brilliance and they’re what keep it from totally failing. Perhaps the best comes after a disastrous author event at the bookstore. A.J. orchestrates a reading from the author of the book that launched his and Amy’s romance. Unfortunately, the author is a disappointment, shamelessly ogling her and eventually projectile vomiting after spending the whole event drinking. It’s a total disaster—until Amy notices a mysterious woman (Lauren Stamile) lingering in the bookstore once everyone else leaves. The conversation that ensues is also a rumination on life’s disappointments, but there’s something hopeful in its honesty. It’s an adult conversation and it’s in moments like this when the film manages to use its sentimentality to express more complex truths that it shines.
Indeed, The Storied Life of A.J. Fikry has discreet moments of brilliance and, in part, that’s by design. A.J. love’s for short story collections is integral to Zevin’s novel and its structure is deliberately like a loose collection of intertwining short stories. However, in trying to maintain that structure within the film, the plotting becomes both episodic and so overstuffed that it loses its nuance.
That’s perhaps most evident when it comes to Maya. The film takes her from age 2 to 14 (with a 7-year time jump in the middle) and she carries much of the emotion driving the film’s last act. While Blaire Brown, who plays teenaged Maya, is very good as an introspective girl struggling to find her authorial voice, the simple fact is, we haven’t spent enough time with these characters to form the attachment necessary to make the emotions work. The script is so busy trying to put all the pieces of this makeshift family together that it never has time to show us the intimacy that should bind them.
Though The Storied Life of A.J. Fikry should have every element it needs to succeed, it simply lacks the magic Zevin created on the page. Though Nayyar and the rest of the cast play their roles with total sincerity, the characters’ lives become absurd when the drama is condensed into feature length and instead of a whimsical story about fate and the magic of books, it becomes a cloying melodrama with brief moments of pure truth. Admittedly, the film improves upon rewatch when you’re already prepared for its heightened tone. Unfortunately, many viewers probably won’t even make it through that first viewing.
