REVIEW. ETERNITY Feels Like Forever... But That's Not Necessarily a Good Thing.

From Left, Callum Turner, Elizabeth Olsen and Miles Teller in David Freyne's Eternity.

"You can only choose one." - Eternity tagline.

If you had to pick one path for the after-life (assuming there is one), what would it be? What would you choose?

I'll admit that, after seeing a trailer for Eternity several weeks ago, I was hoping for a screwball rom-dramedy in the tradition of Warren Beatty's 1978 triumph, Heaven Can Wait. You know, someone dies (perhaps, prematurely), and gets caught in a kind of etheral holding station where they must make various choices about the here, the now, and even the hereafter. Beatty's remake of a remake (a 1938 play of the same name by Harry Segall and a 1941 movie titled Here Comes Mr. Jordan), nabbed nine Academy Award nominations and won one (Best Art Direction), and marked the only time (still) in Oscar history that someone (Beatty) was nominated in the acting, directing, writing and producing categories for the same film. Not even Orson Welles achieved that feat! So, needless to say, my expectations for Eternity were probably inappropriately high.

Heaven Can Wait remains on my short list of all-time favorite genre-bending off-beat comedies (part fantasy, part sports movie, part rom-com), as Beatty seamlessly wove the old-fashioned Hollywood goofiness of pre-WWII screwball comedies with contemporary situations and dilemmas. As it nears its half-century anniversary, I'd argue Heaven Can Wait maintains its brilliance and its relevancy: it's intelligent, funny, silly, and ultimately romantic and satisfying. The first time I saw it in a theater, I was a college student. There were two young women in their twenties sitting in front of me and, as the credits rolled, one of them was sobbing. Turns out, similar to the movie's story, she'd lost her fiance to a terrible accident and, through tears, said the movie was comforting, offering hope that she might some day encounter his spirit again. The power of cinema.

David Freyne's latest entry in the exploration of the after-life arrives with a slightly different conundrum: If given the choice, with whom would want to spend eternity? In this case, Joan (Elizabeth Olsen), a recently deceased octegenarian (played as an elder by the wonderful Betty Buckley), finds herself in a kind of Grand Central transitional limbo: she's got one week to decide where she wants to spend eternity. The options are endless, everything from Paris Land (where everyone speaks English with a French accent) to Beach World. Once you choose, though, you can't go back. But Joan's choice doesn't only involve where she wants to spend eternity, but with whom. Larry (Miles Teller), her husband of sixty-five years, died shortly before her, and is waiting for her so they can spend eternity together. The problem is Joan was married briefly before Larry to Luke (Callum Turner), a young soldier killed in the Korea War. Turns out Luke has managed to finagle a job as a bartender in the after-life and has been waiting for Joan to join him for sixty-seven years.

What's a girl to do? The obvious dilemma - Do I choose the person I've built a life with all our differences and disappointments, or my first love who is part distant memory/part fantasy? - serves as the movie's basic storyline. Should Joan choose the life she knows or the life she never had? The obvious ups-and-downs Joan had with Larry are now placed alongside the unfulfilled dreams she had with Luke, setting the stage for some potentially meaningful insights into life, love, and what brings us joy. Unfortunately, Freyne and co-writer Pat Cunnane (who wrote the original screenplay) never get the humor or the drama off the ground in a cohesive way so. Except for a few clever one-liners and strong comedic performances by the two "After Life Coordinators" (yes, you read that correctly), played by Da'Vine Joy Randolph and John Early, the narrative never quite gels, and Joan's decision-making process turns into one tedious scene after another.

In particular, Randolph lights up the screen the same way she did during her Oscar-winning turn as Best Supporting Actress in 2023's high school dramedy, The Holdovers. She's the only bright spot in an otherwise dull movie.

About half-way through Eternity, my husband leaned in and whispered, "Who the fuck wants to spend time with these assholes?" A probing question, for sure. Good thing he's not writing this review. But his comment, no matter how typical of him (or how snarky), was spot-on in identifying the movie's essential flaws. The three leads - Teller, Olsen and Turner - are not interesting enough as characters nor in the actors' respective portrayals, to draw us in to their situation. And the questions raised about life and love - though interspersed throughout the narrative - aren't developed enough visually or through dialogue to keep us interested in how the story will be resolved.

I'm guessing there were others with high expectations for Cunnane's 2022 script, which was voted onto "The Black List" that year as one of the most liked, unproduced screenplays. Apparently, something happened between the completion of the original story, the rewrite w/Freyne, and the final movie project. Overall, the movie just falls flat, with little or no appeal for any of the three main characters, including Joan. There's no real passion in Olsen's scenes with Turner (a former model whose physical appearance alone should be swoon-worthy), and no genuine comedic spark with Teller, especially since it's their differences that form the foundation of their decades long happy marriage.

In effect, there's good stuff here that never quite comes together in a compelling, funny, or touching way. And that's essentially what makes a rom-com good. The conflict (no matter how far-fetched) needs to drive the outcome, and the journey to get there must be filled with enough humor and heartbreak to keep the audience engaged. Even the final sequence, which shows a desperate Joan revisiting (again) the "archives" which allows her to see past moments with her husbands, isn't paced to sufficiently convey the urgency of her uncertainty, her desperation to make the right choice, if there is such a thing.

I kept thinking about Heaven Can Wait, where a similarly implausible situation - fictional LA Rams quarterback Joe Pendleton (Warren Beatty) is taken to "heaven" too soon when an overzealous rookie guardian angel (a delightful Buck Henry, who co-wrote the screenplay and co-directed with Beatty), intervenes in what appears to be a fatal bicycle/truck accident and retrieves Pendleton's soul. When Pendleton's remains are cremated, his guardian angel and the angel's supervisor, Mr. Jordan, (the unflappable James Mason) must find him another body.

The chaos escalates when Pendleton chooses to inhabit the body of an eccentric old millionaire named Leo Farnsworth, whose cheating wife (Dyan Cannon) and smarmy "personal private assistant" (Charles Grodin), are plotting to kill him. Of course, Pendleton's choice revolves around his attraction to a young British environmentalist named Betty Logan (Julie Christie), whose fiery passion for helping the small town in England where Farnsworth is planning to build an oil refinery, intrigues Joe. He senses, if he occupies Farnsworth's body, he can help her.

The resulting conflicts - from Leo's abrupt change in personality (Joe's spirit is still alive in his body) to the adulterous couple's failed attempts to get rid of him, to Joe's determination to get Leo's body in shape for the Super Bowl to Betty's quiet, balanced fascination watching all of this unfold - is frantic, funny and, ultimately touching. Somehow Beatty, at that time Hollywood's eternal bad boy, managed to find a way to show convincingly that true love is possible, that it's our souls that are intrinsically connected.

Watching Heaven Can Wait again (I won't reveal how many times, but it's definitely double-digits), I kept thinking about today's rom-com stories, which for me often lack the intelligence and wit of previous generations. Overall, current rom-com's seem to be short on mystery and complexity, and without enough exposition to transport audiences to a bigger cinematic world: one which can raise essential philosophical questions and provide resolutions to unlikely/unbelievable situations that seem appropriate, even applicable, to the audience.

Eternity falls short in each of these areas and one more: the chemistry between characters that usually spells success in a rom-com. Think about past couples' chemistry that gave the rom-com credibility: Carole Lombard/Clark Gable in 1934's It Happened One Night, Audrey Hepburn/Gregory Peck in 1953's Roman Holiday, Robert Redford/Jane Fonda in 1967's Barefoot in the Park, Diane Keaton/Woody Allen in anything they did together but, iconically, in 1977's Annie Hall, Meg Ryan/Billy Crystal in 1989's When Harry Met Sally, or Meg Ryan/Tom Hanks in 1993's Sleepless in Seattle.

In Heaven Can Wait, all we need is to see in a single, lingering glance between Warren Beatty and Julie Christie to know their souls are forever connected. What that connection means in terms of "happily ever after" has changed in movies over the years, but the idea of an ending that feels satsifying, even if bittersweet, is that stuff that makes a rom-com's appeal eternal, at least as the credits role. Unfortunately, by the time Eternity winds its way to a conclusion, I just wanted the story to end. I really didn't care who Joan chose or how they would spend their forever. Whatever the case, it had all the makings of uninspired monotony, not romantic paradise. In this respect, Eternity -italicized or not - seems dreadful.

Years ago, I was told that "eternity/heaven" is doing what you love forever. Eternity suggests that, as in life, we have say in shaping that forever. Do we have a choice in what forever means?

If so, what/who would you choose?

*******

Eternity is currently playing in theaters. It is rated PG-13 for heavenly conundrums and some sexual content. A streaming date has not yet been announced.

Next up on MJ's movie list: Hamnet.