Ewan McGregor stars as a cleaning man in L.A. who takes his boss's daughter hostage after being fired and replaced by a robot. Two "angels" who are in charge of human relationships on earth, offer some unsolicited help to bring this unlikely couple together. The "angels" are so successful that the daughter soon turns on her father in order to save her captor.

This is a surprising disappointment, considering it is the third film from director Danny Boyle, writer John Hodge and actor Ewan McGregor. This disjointed and strained romantic comedy is not even near the same league as Trainspotting and Shallow Grave. Cameron Diaz is a spoiled heiress and McGregor an aimless janitor brought together by two angels (Holly Hunter and Delroy Lindo) hoping to hang onto their wings. McGregor kidnaps Diaz, the boss's daughter, after being fired from his crummy job. She is not all that averse to being snatched. Most of the laughs are lost to a scattershot story that feels preposterous instead of magical. --Rochelle O'Gorman

``Life Less Ordinary'' is from the team that gave us ``Shallow Grave'' and ``Trainspotting,'' so maybe it's a penance that their characters this time are angels and lovers, rather than body snatchers and druggies. See, ma? We're good lads at heart. The film expends enormous energy to tell a story that is tedious and contrived. It begins in heaven's police station, where Chief Gabriel (acting on orders from the top) dispatches two angels to earth to engineer a romance. It appears that God is displeased by the divorce rate. We meet the two lovers that heaven plans to unite. Robert (Ewan McGregor) is a janitor. Celine (Cameron Diaz) is a millionaire's daughter who amuses herself by using a handgun to shoot apples off the head of her fiance (Stanley Tucci). (She misses, and a friend observes, ``He'll live, but he'll never practice orthodontics again.'') Robert works for her father's company, and when he's replaced by robots, he seizes one of the squat little machines and tries to smash it against the wall of the chairman's office. The millionaire (Ian Holm) calls security, Robert grabs a gun from a guard, and at a crucial point Celine kicks the gun back into Robert's grasp--maybe because she hopes he will kidnap her, which he does. The film then settles into a formula familiar from two other recent films, ``Excess Baggage'' and ``Nothing to Lose.'' The kidnapper and his victim grow friendly and eventually become conspirators. Robert turns out to be inept at making threatening phone calls, and Celine starts with helpful hints and ends up stage-managing the kidnapping herself. (``That's all I am to you,'' he complains bitterly. ``Your latest kidnapper--a fashion accessory!'') All of this is being manipulated, in a sense, by two angels, Jackson (Delroy Lindo) and O'Reilly (Holly Hunter). For reasons unclear to me, they are hired by the millionaire to track down his daughter and the kidnapper, and the movie develops into a long, unhinged chase sequence in which the angels act more like cops than matchmakers. By this point I was well past caring. After the anarchic glee of ``Trainspotting,'' this film is a move toward the mainstream by the team of director Danny Boyle, producer Andrew Macdonald and writer John Hodge. It's a conventional movie that never convinces us that it needed to be made. Most films with angels depend more on supernatural intervention than character development, but in this case the film seems completely confused about the nature the intervention should take, and so are we. The plot's a mess, the characters flail about in scenes without points, and the more we see of Cameron Diaz and Ewan McGregor, the more we yearn for a nice, simple little love story--say, about the rich girl who falls in love with the Scots janitor and gets along just fine without any angels. --BY ROGER EBERT

Be careful what you wish for, you might get it. And it might turn out to be "A Life Less Ordinary." The latest effort from the crew that made "Trainspotting" so exciting--writer John Hodge, director Danny Boyle, producer Andrew Macdonald and star Ewan McGregor--"A Life Less Ordinary" sounds like everything audiences weary of business-as-usual major studio romances would be happy to embrace. After all, this film has charismatic stars and a non-cookie-cutter script whose fondness for the unexpected means it didn't go anywhere near development hell. But the result is no more than a forced fable, a self-consciously smarty-pants concoction that is too clever by half and too pleased with itself in the bargain. That's even more of a shame because the chemistry between McGregor and co-star Cameron Diaz is especially powerful and periodically threatens to rescue the movie all by itself. It can't, but even so, Diaz's gift for romantic comedy, coming after her success in "My Best Friend's Wedding," should place her in the "next Julia Roberts-new Sandra Bullock" slot Hollywood is always eager to fill. Producer Macdonald is the grandson of Emeric Pressburger, the longtime partner of British director Michael Powell, and, like that pair's David Niven-starring "A Stairway to Heaven"/"A Matter of Life and Death," "A Life Less Ordinary" revolves around heaven's influence on earthly romance. The film opens in a bleached-out, whiter-than-white hereafter where Gabriel (Dan Hedaya) functions as a chief of police. He tells two of his veteran detective-angels, O'Reilly (Holly Hunter) and Jackson (Delroy Lindo), that the deity is peeved at how dysfunctional modern relationships have proved to be, how few couples manage to stay "bonded in eternal harmony." Their assignment is to bring two people together and, as an extra incentive, if they don't succeed they won't be allowed back through the gates of eternity. It's an especially tough assignment that O'Reilly and Jackson are given. The man and woman they have to manipulate into falling in love are so disparate in every way (except, as the casting ensures, in star quality) that in the ordinary course of events they would never even meet. Celine (Diaz) is the classic bored little rich girl with a life that's like an upscale perfume ad. She takes time off from swimming in a pool big enough to float the Titanic only to shoot apples off the head of the trusty butler employed by her tycoon father, Naville (Ian Holm). Robert (McGregor), on the other hand, is one of Naville's lowliest employees, a janitor manque so inconsequential he can be replaced by a robot. As an unambitious, naive, would-be trash novelist, he is also dropped in favor of an aerobics instructor by a girlfriend who insists, "I want a man, not a dreamer." Determined to have his say about his lost job, Robert bursts into Naville's office while the great man is chatting with Celine, and ends up, more by accident than on purpose, kidnapping the tycoon's daughter and spiriting her away to a remote cabin he somehow stumbles upon. Decisive action is not Robert's strength, but the avaricious Celine, who's been kidnapped before, soon swings into action, masterminding a demand for ransom and in general giving the hapless Robert fits. Not very promising material for an eternal romance, but with expulsion from heaven as the alternative, O'Reilly and Jackson are not easily deterred. Reduced to a bare outline, "A Life Less Ordinary" sounds promising, and in fact the film sporadically amuses with lines like Robert's complaint to Celine, "That's all I am to you, the latest kidnapper, a lifestyle accessory." But though it wears its arbitrariness proudly, there is simply too much over- elaborate silliness masquerading as wit here, not to mention a grating self-congratulatory tone. The supporting actors are similarly all over the place, especially the angels, with the usually unflappable Lindo looking lost and Hunter trying on a succession of accents as if they were outfits by Prada. "A Life Less Ordinary" is so intent on being a film out of the ordinary that it doesn't notice how unsatisfying it's become. Still, there are Diaz and McGregor to enjoy, and that is no small thing. She is a former model without an extensive acting background before her debut in "The Mask," but she excels within her range, and she is every bit the sparkling equal of the trained, experienced McGregor, who is virtuoso enough to have appeared in the very different "Trainspotting," "Emma" and "The Pillow Book," all in the same year. Unlikely as it sounds, these two make a swell match on screen. At least heaven got that much right. -- KENNETH TURAN

Nominated: Best Dance Sequence; Best Movie Song