The Storied Life Of A. J. Fikry: Review

12th October 2022

The Storied Life Of A. J. Fikry: Review – A. J. Fikry (Kunal Nayyar) is seriously depressed after losing the love of his life. Her sister, Ismay (Christina Hendricks) makes sure that he doesn’t drink himself to death, but the lonely book store owner’s life just isn’t the same anymore.

Then after one drunken night, A. J. wakes up and realises that his most prized possession, a valuable book, has gone missing and so he contacts Officer Lambiasse (David Arquette) about what he can do.

However, not only did A. J. lose his book, but he found a small child who after some time, he decides to raise as his own. Life seems to slowly get better for A. J. and soon a romance blossoms with Amelia (Lucy Hale) who shares his passion for books.

The Storied Life of A. J. Fikry is a movie directed by Hans Canosa and written by Gabrielle Zevin, adapted from her book of the same name. This is the fourth collaboration between writer and director as well and considering Canosa has only adapted Zevin’s work for his movies, it seems that they have a solid working relationship. However, it seems that the eagerness in adapting Zevin’s latest New York Times best seller into a movie has its problems.

The main complaint about book to movie adaptations are that there just isn’t enough time to put in everything and the things that are there may come across differently than they do in the book. This seems to be the case with A. J. Fikry as although there may have been many fleshed out characters with intriguing story arcs of their own, the translation doesn’t work as well on film.

The title also suggests that the story will solely be about Mr. Fikry, but over time it becomes clear that Zevin’s book may have taken a multi protagonist approach. Because although the movie sets up the film to be his story, there are plot points and character developments that come out of nowhere.

This may come across as confusing for an audience who hasn’t read the book and with very little focus in the characters, it feels like there’s very little reason to care about anybody.

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