Eternity film review: Just an old-fashioned romantic comedy in which everyone is dead

It’s develop into boring in itself to complain about all of the remakes, reboots and sequels dominating launch schedules. However I’m going to do it anyway. Your native multiplex proper now could be doubtless exhibiting a slew of follow-up movies: Depraved: For Good, Zootropolis 2, 5 Nights at Freddy’s (look forward to it) 2 and Avatar: Fireplace and Ash.

I’m not saying these are horrible films, though I do suppose that some are skating by on title recognition. However I’d love if it extra individuals may discover and luxuriate in authentic movies after they come alongside. Particularly when the movie is as charming as Eternity.

Eternity is a romantic comedy that owes a debt to the nice and cozy, high-concept comedies of the early Nineties. Consider Mel Brooks’ Defending Your Life or Harold Ramis’ Groundhog Day.

The story begins with aged couple Joan and Larry inflicting a significant neighbourhood tailback as they drive with excruciating slowness to their great-grandchild’s gender reveal get together, bickering all of the whereas. Joan, it seems, has terminal most cancers, however Larry beats her to the punch by choking on a pretzel and keeling over earlier than the celebration has even began.

He involves on a prepare, pink confetti nonetheless in his hair. Larry is now in his thirties once more (and performed by Miles Teller). After loss of life, you see, everyone seems to be returned – in look, a minimum of – to the age at which they had been at their happiest. For Larry, that was within the early years of his marriage to Joan.   

The prepare is taking him to The Junction, from which level he can select his very best afterlife. So, from Larry’s perspective, all is effectively. All he must do is pack for the beach-themed paradise of his desires and depart phrase for Joan to comply with him when she arrives.

It doesn’t take lengthy for Joan – now equally de-aged (and performed by Elizabeth Olsen) – to seek out herself on an identical prepare. Larry fortunately bumps into her earlier than he departs and it might seem that they’re midway to heaven already. However a complication arises with the looks of her dreamboat first husband Luke (Callum Turner), a soldier who was killed at battle and has been ready for her at The Junction for 67 years.

Joan can solely select one afterlife and, as soon as she’s made her determination, she will be able to’t change her thoughts. So, will she spend eternity with the person she by no means had an opportunity to stay a life with, or the one she did?

Pat Cunnane’s screenplay has been floating round Hollywood for some time, ready for the best group to carry it to life. In 2022, it topped The Black Record – a survey of essentially the most admired, unproduced scripts, as voted for by the trade’s manufacturing executives – and was lastly picked up and funded by A24.

It’s at all times encouraging when this occurs: a movie idea is noticed and produced for its nice concepts alone, and never as a result of a studio purchased the rights to a online game, or a snack meals, or a preferred branded cheese (Lunchables: The Film is inevitable on an extended sufficient timeline).

A24 has made a reputation for itself doing simply that, both producing or distributing Uncut Gems, Our bodies Our bodies Our bodies, Ti West’s X trilogy, The Zone of Curiosity, Love Lies Bleeding and lots of extra of essentially the most fascinating movies of current years.

And Eternity has nice concepts aplenty. The Junction itself is an amusingly dated resort and exhibition centre complicated, filled with stalls aggressively touting totally different afterlives. There are the apparent choices, comparable to Seaside World and Mountain World. Then there are area of interest choices: Capitalist World; Weimar World, which provides all of the enjoyable of Cabaret, minus the Nazis; Nudist World, which is at all times at a balmy 72 levels. There’s additionally the extremely well-liked Man-Free World, on its 443rd incarnation and nonetheless over-subscribed.

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Then there are the characters themselves. It’s Elizabeth Olsen’s movie and he or she imbues Joan with screwball comedian vitality – she is, in any case, a girl in her eighties who out of the blue finds that her joints work once more – however she’s given likeable assist by Teller and Turner.

At this afterlife waystation, the not too long ago deceased are assigned an Afterlife Coordinator, and Larry and Joan’s are a squabbling pair, entertainingly performed by Da’Vine Pleasure Randolph and John Early. These low-level bureaucrats are battling the weariness of a job that’s grown meaningless over time and at odds over what they contemplate the happiest of comfortable endings for his or her purchasers.

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Director David Freyne should get credit score for the success of this ensemble, in addition to for stretching the funds in some imaginative methods to create artefacts of the afterlife, such because the archive tunnels – a light end-of-pier type attraction through which reminiscences are displayed in dramatised vignettes.

There’s additionally the pleasing incontrovertible fact that there are many nods to queer tradition, offsetting the Moonraker-style obsession with heterosexual pairing – a profit of getting a homosexual director. Even that inevitable rom-com staple, the homosexual finest buddy, is employed in a recent and stunning approach.

It’s not a seamless movie, nevertheless. There are some fascinating glimpses right into a sinister aspect of the afterlife which, disappointingly, usually are not adopted up on, among the jokes don’t fairly hit, and the ending is definitely guessable – though the twists alongside the way in which usually are not.

That is the time of yr after we’re able to succumb to some cosy emotions and, when you’re not within the temper for the bells and reindeer of a Christmas film, Eternity will furnish you with a equally heat glow.

Eternity opens within the UK on 5 December.