#REVIEW The Meaning of Life

The Meaning of Life directed by Cat Hostick is a sappy Canadian tear-jerker with a predictable storyline that works if you’re looking for a film purely for entertainment.

We all have choices in life when we have to make a decision for our careers, and for the ones we love. The film centers around starving musician Finn Farber (Tyler Shaw) who gets a temporary job as a therapeutic clown who gets assigned to a 9-year-old leukemia patient Sophia Hill (Sadie Munroe). Finn gets trapped in deciding to pursue his music career while his father lectures him into telling him to get a real job. While being a therapeutic clown, Finn and Sophia’s relationship starts to develop while learning more about one another. Finn soon learns that Sophia loves to paint, while she becomes all smitten with his music and they develop a beautiful friendship that soon teaches Finn an important lesson before he makes a big decision in his life.

As for Shaw’s first acting gig, he did an alright job. He’s got a great voice and some amazing ballads, but I wasn’t completely sold on the acting. It’s tough for a musician to jump into a big-screen acting gig but putting a real-life musician into a musician role, was able to justify his first big film role. The credit goes to Hostick and the directional job. For a low budget indie film, each scene and the pacing of the shots were well accomplished.

As corny as “finding the meaning of life” sounds, this film does put out some key learnings in life. One of the first things Finn was told was “do not get too attached”. Now isn’t that something we get told every day when jumping into a relationship?  I did shed a few tears and couldn’t help but relate to Finn’s situation. I’d recommend seeing this if you just want to pass time with some great music and entertainment.

Indiecan Entertainment releases The Meaning of Life at Carlton Cinemas (Toronto) on Friday, Sept 27, 2019