My familiarity with the work of Albert Brooks is mostly from various comedic acting roles. He’s a funny guy. Yeah, I probably know him best for voicing a clownfish, but he’s still a funny guy. But he actually made a name for himself more as a writer and director of various comedies, starting off as the first guy to do short films for Saturday Night Live. He hasn’t really wrote and directed anything since 2005’s Looking for Comedy in the Muslim World, but the point stands that it was his work behind the camera that got him more notice than his work in front of it.
However, I think his last really acclaimed work as writer/director was Defending Your Life, and guess what I found on HBO Max…
Daniel Miller (Brooks) dies suddenly when he doesn’t look where he’s going while driving and goes head first into a bus. He wakes up in Judgement City, the place where the recently deceased go to review their lives to determine if they will be moving on to the next life (whatever it is) or sent back to Earth to try again. The good news as far as that goes is there is no Hell, and it doesn’t seem to matter too much how many times you get to go through life as long as you demonstrate some growth. Everyone in Judgement City is given a few days at a trial of some kind to mostly see if the recently deceased has gotten over his or her fears and become a better person. Daniel has an advocate named Bob Diamond (Rip Torn) and that’s about it. In the meantime, he can enjoy the best food he’s ever had without having to worry about weight gain, a wide range of activities, and the possibility to maybe fall in love.,
That last one isn’t really part of the divine plan for most. Many of the other recently deceased Daniel meets are much older than he is, but then there’s Julia (Meryl Streep). Julia is a shoo-in for moving on, delightfully fun, and she thinks Daniel is a bit of a hoot. Daniel, meanwhile, was a ball of anxiety in life, and even as Bob spins Daniel’s days in the best light possible, with a “prosecutor” (Lee Grant) picking over his worst moments and doing the opposite, it does seem as if Daniel may be out of luck if Julia moves on and he goes back to Earth, there to forget everything he just went through. Can Daniel prove he’s moved past his fears if he is maybe still feeling them in the afterlife?
As high concept comedies go, this one is fairly simple and straightforward. It’s also not a bad afterlife at all., so there’s no real need to worry. Granted, no one alive knows that, but the movie doesn’t really address that much and, quite frankly, doesn’t need to. Brooks has the rather blasé and stressed out guy down. He need to show he got over his fears, but he’s nothing but afraid from the looks of things. His trip to a past life pavilion shows he was, in a previous life, an African native running away from something scary, and many of his decisions in life and after seem to revolve around keeping himself as safe as possible. He doesn’t even want people to acknowledge his birthday because then he won’t have to worry about being rejected by friends he maybe doesn’t have. The pre-death scenes are short but depicted in a vital way: he really didn’t have anything to live for, so how is he supposed to convince anyone in the next life he does and shouldn’t have to try again?
The real joy of the movie, though, is Streep. Meryl Streep is one of the most adept actresses alive today, and when she can go from an intense drama to the likes of, well, this shows why she is as good as she is. She’s lively, fun, and easily the most interesting part of Judgement City, a place that may cater to your needs but doesn’t seem all that interesting a place to call home given the natives’ habit of calling people “little brains”. Besides, no one gets to stay there for very long. But give a man like Daniel a woman like Julia, and maybe even the most pathetic nobody can find some courage to actually take a chance, the one thing the universe of Defending Your Life actually wants, and as messages go, that isn’t a bad one.
Grade: B+
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