Life Itself is a 2018 American psychological drama film written, co-produced and directed by Dan Fogelman.

"[4] Narrator Samuel L. Jackson calls Henry the hero, as he talks to his therapist, Dr. Cait Morris.

Her subsequent guardian, Uncle Joe, sexually abused her for years, until she threatened to kill him if he touched her again.

Another time, Abby excitedly talks to Will about her thesis on the unreliable narrator: life is the ultimate one as it is so tricky and surprising.

Sitting on a bench smoking weed, Dylan imagines her mother's final moment.

In Spain, olive plantation owner Vincent Saccione invites worker Javier Gonzalez inside.

Rodrigo is enjoying himself, until he distracts their bus driver, inadvertently causing Abby to be killed which traumatizes him.

Dylan and Rodrigo's daughter Elena reads from her book, "Life Itself", the story of everything up to her parents' meeting.

She repeats what Isabel told Rodrigo: even if life brings us to our knees, if we look hard enough, we will find love.

[5] Marty Bowen and Wyck Godfrey served as producers on the film under their Temple Hill Entertainment banner.

[11] In December 2017, a fierce bidding war for distribution rights for the film, fought between Amazon Studios, Universal Pictures, and Paramount Pictures, concluded with Amazon Studios winning the rights with a $10-million-dollar-plus bid.

[15] In the United States and Canada and China, Life Itself was released alongside The House with a Clock in Its Walls, Assassination Nation and Fahrenheit 11/9, and was projected to gross $4–6 million from 2,578 theaters during its opening weekend.

[16] It brought in $2.1 million over its first weekend, finishing 11th, behind a number of films that ranged from their second to seventh week in theaters.

The website's critical consensus reads, "A mawkish melodrama that means less the more it tries to say, Life Itself suggests writer-director Dan Fogelman's talents are best suited to television.

It's a movie made for people who can't be trusted to understand any storytelling unless it's not just spoon-fed but ladled on, piled high, and explained via montage and voiceover.

"[21] A. O. Scott, chief film critic for The New York Times, calls it an "inadvertently hilarious" film, filled with "parental slaughter ... (where) mothers and fathers are hit by buses, perish in car accidents, commit suicide and succumb to cancer," though he praises Isaac, Wilde, Costa, and Peris-Mencheta (playing the "starting" couples in the two countries) for their acting.