REVIEW: Experience, ‘The Ultimate Life’
What will you do with your life? What difference will you make in someone else’s life?
“The Ultimate Life” explores those questions and more in a beautifully-crafted sequel to “The Ultimate Gift.”
The story takes place about two years after the events from the previous movie. Billionaire Jason Stevens (Logan Bartholomew) and Alexia (Ali Hillis) are still together but are slowly drifting apart due to priority changes. Alexia wants to go on a nursing strip to Haiti, but Jason is so busy with work, he doesn’t have time to listen to her plans. She leaves a letter with him, and when he opens it later that night, he discovers she left the country.
Jason frantically tracks down his friend and lawyer Ted Hamilton (Bill Cobbs) and vents to him. Hamilton listens and then hands Jason his grandfather Red Steven’s journal and tells him it’s the story behind the lessons. Then the real adventure begins.
The primary story of “The Ultimate Life” is about Red and the journey he endured to come up with the lessons Jason learned in the previous movie. It’s a great story of determination, hard work, hardships and overcoming challenges. There’s love, light drama and comedy.
One of the nice things about “The Ultimate Life” is you don’t have to be familiar with “The Ultimate Gift” to enjoy this movie – although you’ll appreciate it more if you’ve seen the first movie, because you’ll be more attached to the characters.
The movie is not a replica or a reflection of “The Ultimate Gift,” something I was concerned about. There were elements that were similar, because Red’s lessons came from his experiences, and the lessons forced Jason to embrace some of same challenges.
It’s a touching movie filled with emotion. I teared up a number of times. The film caused me to be reflective of my life and what I’ve done with it, and it seemed to affect the rest of the audience too. I walked out of the movie theater a better person.
As with its predecessor, the story is full of life lessons. One of the lessons that stuck out to me was, “You’ve got to be grateful for the little things in life. Otherwise, you’ll never be grateful for nothing.”
There are also great business lessons that can be extracted from Red’s story, such as surrounding yourself with a super team to cover for your weaknesses and making sure money isn’t the only reason you’re doing business.
“The Ultimate Life” is a wonderful feel-good movie, and that type of movie unfortunately happens about as often as a seasonal blue moon.
Most of the modern-day actors were the same in “The Ultimate Life” as in “The Ultimate Gift,” with the exception of Bartholomew playing Jason Stephens instead of Drew Fuller. It bothered me at first, but I quickly got over it, especially since this movie focused on Red.
The music was appropriate for the locations and periods, from Texas to Italy and the Great Depression to modern day. “The Ultimate Gift” composer Mark McKenzie returned for the sequel, flawlessly bringing in new flavor and old themes.
Plain and simple, I loved “The Ultimate Life.” The movie is definitely worth your money. It’s one I’m definitely going to add to my collection. The only reason I didn’t give it a solid “A” grade is because of a coup
le cheesy scenes, but they were hardly noticeable.
Single or married, date or not, see this movie; you’ll learn a lot.