Hollywood has created a lot of movies, and many stories have been recycled more than once. Take Eternity, for example. It takes from Heaven Can Wait, starring Don Ameche, and Defending Your Life directed by Albert Brooks and starring he and Meryl Streep, There not one for one remakes but they have similar premises to one another. This just proves Hollywood is out of ideas. That and the fact that there are so many remakes, reboots, sequels, and prequels each year that it’s obvious. The filmmaker here, David Freyne, tried to do something original with this material, but it came across as more of the same for me after having already seen the other two films.

Larry Cutler (Miles Teller) is a man who recently passed away at a party for one of his grandchildren. When he gets to the afterlife, it’s not exactly what he expected.  He’s a bit disoriented and confused at what’s going on. He gets help from his afterlife coordinator “AC” for short. Anna (Devine Joy Randolph), recently coming off of her Academy Award win for Best Supporting Actress for The Holdovers, tries to help him navigate the afterlife by picking an “Eternity” to spend the rest of his days in. The problem is he’s waiting for his wife Joan (Elizabeth Olson), who is deathly ill herself down on Earth and could join her husband at any time. Once Olson’s character finally arrives, there are more complicated matters at hand. Apparently , her first husband, Luke (Callum Turner) is there as well, and he has been wanting 67 years for her to pass away so he can spend the rest of his “Eternity” with her as well. This causes a major problem for everyone involved in this situation. 

The topic of death has been one that has come up in films and television shows for years now. Various ways that this had been dealt with have come across very differently on the big and small screen. There have been dramas, and there have been comedies like this movie. The comedy comes in the form of a fish out of water scenario. Not every day does a person end up in a way station on the way to their ultimate destination of death. The place they will spend the rest of their lives at. It’s different for each of us. What we perceive as heaven as they say is in the eyes of the beholder. Some may think of heaven as a mountain top villa with a river, some snow and places to go for walks in the woods. Others may think of heaven as a beach without sun and water to sit by. I honestly feel like if I spent my afterlife watching baseball, the Boston Red Sox, at Fenway Park, I’d be a happy camper. That’s just me, though. Each one of us is different. I like the perception the film takes on this, but it’s a little far-fetched for me. I don’t think the afterlife would be such a  simple concept. Who knows? Maybe I’m wrong.

As far as the three main cast members go. I was glad to see three actors, Teller, Turner, and Olson, doing different kinds of work from what they are usually used to doing. They are mostly known as dramatic actors, and there is a lot of that in this movie. They tend to make this situation funnier than one would think.The script made light of the whole scenario of death and so forth. Teller uses a New York accent, and along with the others, they all tend to have the personality of older people because all of the characters reverted from their older self to quote un quote their most happiest point in their lives. This is their younger, barely adult selves. I think this would be a  happy time in a lot of people’s lives. I think it would be for that’s for sure, because the older I’ve gotten, the worse life has gotten for me. Most of my life hasn’t been happy, though. I like how the writer perceived life after death and how the actors handled it. It was pretty interesting, to say the least.

One of the things that came across very fake looking was the waystation area. Once the people die, they go there. It’s like a lobby of a big fancy hotel. It was kind of neat in a way. This is where the afterlife coordinators meet up with their clients, as they call them. Devine Joy Randolph and John Early play the main two “AC’s”. They brought a lot of humor to the film.This is where I got most of my enjoyment of this movie.They made the afterlife funny and interesting in a way. Even though the production design was kind of campy, it went along with the campy nature of the afterlife. How the director and co-writer David Freyne made what may or may not come after death funnier than I’d originally thought it would be. That’s a hard thing to do since death is such an arbitrary concept. 

A24 is a studio that has greenlit a lot of storage and off the walls films. The one that you’d think would be weird. The one dealing with death and the afterlife turned out to be the most straightforward and normal, considering its subject matter. It’s basically a rom com set in a version of heaven. The leads, Teller, Olson, and Turner, all did a great job in their love triangle if you will. They have to  be more comedic than they typically are on screen. The two supporting characters, Early and Randolph, were quite funny and added a fantastic comedic nature to a rather dark depressing story if you think about it. It does deal with death after all. Even though Eternity reminded me of similar older films about this topic, it handled them in a good way. I was genuinely interested in the three main characters and what would happen in the end to them. The ending was quite formulaic, but it couldn’t be that bad considering the main topic of the film. I think a happy ending was necessary. This movie will give most people a good outlook on death. Even though it’s not a happy topic to deal with on screen. Big or small, for that matter.

3 ½ stars

Dan Skip Allen