Six years after piercing the yuppie delusion of the open road with his trenchantly funny "Lost in America", Albert Brooks went again behind and before the camera to make this amusing, soft-centered 1991 romantic fantasy involving one man's challenge in handling the afterlife. As with "Lost in America", Brooks casts himself as an LA-based advertising executive (a favorite calling of his for the satirical possibilities), but this time a very successful one named Daniel Miller. As he dives for some CDs in the spanking new BMW convertible he bought himself for his birthday, he crashes into a bus and dies. Before you can say heaven can wait, Daniel finds himself in a white tunic in a sterile-looking place called Judgment City. As he finds out, this is where he is to be placed on trial to find out if he moves on to heaven or has to return to earth.
The rest of the film is focused on Daniel's trial, where he gets to witness select scenes from his life on a big screen, evidence used by both the defense lawyer and the prosecutor to support their respective cases. In the midst of the trial, he meets and falls in love with an idealized woman named Julia, the perfect candidate for heaven made clear by her innate goodness and shorter trial. His response to their romance leads to a nicely executed climax which tests Daniel's deep-seeded fears toward his inevitable fate. Although I miss the pervasive acerbity that I have come to expect from Brooks' comedy style, he achieves a winsome romanticism here and addresses pertinent questions about how fear holds us back from the things we really want.
As Daniel, Brooks is a softer version of himself though just as self-critical, while a relaxed, accent-free Meryl Streep is ideally cast as the too-good-to-be-true Julia, whose only quirk is the bottomless appetite that the afterlife allows her. The two develop a nice rapport that makes the ending emotionally palpable. In welcome appearances, a likable Rip Torn and a tough-minded Lee Grant play their roles as the battling lawyers with precision. Even Shirley MacLaine shows up in a cameo in a particularly funny scene set at the aptly named Past Lives Pavilion, where people can see their previous incarnations. This is an unexpectedly warm and fuzzy treat from a master of comedy sarcasm. There are unfortunately no extras with the 2001 DVD.
The rest of the film is focused on Daniel's trial, where he gets to witness select scenes from his life on a big screen, evidence used by both the defense lawyer and the prosecutor to support their respective cases. In the midst of the trial, he meets and falls in love with an idealized woman named Julia, the perfect candidate for heaven made clear by her innate goodness and shorter trial. His response to their romance leads to a nicely executed climax which tests Daniel's deep-seeded fears toward his inevitable fate. Although I miss the pervasive acerbity that I have come to expect from Brooks' comedy style, he achieves a winsome romanticism here and addresses pertinent questions about how fear holds us back from the things we really want.
As Daniel, Brooks is a softer version of himself though just as self-critical, while a relaxed, accent-free Meryl Streep is ideally cast as the too-good-to-be-true Julia, whose only quirk is the bottomless appetite that the afterlife allows her. The two develop a nice rapport that makes the ending emotionally palpable. In welcome appearances, a likable Rip Torn and a tough-minded Lee Grant play their roles as the battling lawyers with precision. Even Shirley MacLaine shows up in a cameo in a particularly funny scene set at the aptly named Past Lives Pavilion, where people can see their previous incarnations. This is an unexpectedly warm and fuzzy treat from a master of comedy sarcasm. There are unfortunately no extras with the 2001 DVD.