A24 makes weird movies. Sometimes, they make good weird movies, but they always have a little bit of weirdness on them. Take Eternity, an afterlife rom-com in which two men who had both been married to same woman try convince her to spend eternity with them. The trailers made it sound like everyone gets to pick one person, but here’s poor Elizabeth Olsen, trying really hard to pick between a first love who died young or the second husband who she spent a lot of time with.
That’s probably a tough call, but all I’ll say is I totally get why these two guys would be competing over Elizabeth Olsen.
Larry (Barry Primus) and Joan Cutler (Betty Buckley) have been married for 65 years and are on their way to a gender-reveal party for their granddaughter or great-granddaughter. I’m not sure which, but it doesn’t much matter. Larry, who seems to be constantly annoyed and likes to complain, chokes on a pretzel and dies, waking up on a train in the afterlife to the way station where he will pick his ideal location to spend eternity. He’s in the body he had when he was at his absolute happiest, and now he’s played by Miles Teller. Most of this stuff is explained to him by his Afterlife Coordinator Anna (Da’Vine Joy Randolph), but Larry wants to wait for Joan to catch up to him. She has cancer, so it may not be that long. And indeed, Joan does show up shortly thereafter, now played by Elizabeth Olsen.
There’s just one little problem: Joan has a first husband, Like (Callum Turner), who has been waiting for 67 years for Joan to show up. Luke died in the Korean War, and Joan has spent the rest of that time wondering what sort of life she could have built with him. Now, there are options for all three of them, but once they choose an eternity, they can’t switch out. They could all choose the same eternity, but Larry and Luke probably don’t want that, so it will be up to Joan to choose between the near-perfect first love or the husband who even by his own admission may not quite measure up. Where will these folks spend eternity, and who will they be with?
OK, solid premise, and Teller and Olsen actually do a good job playing people who are a couple decades older than they look. As far as fictional afterlife scenarios go, it’s somewhat creative, though maybe not as creative as I would have liked it to be. Larry, as a character, may not seem to be the sort of person who would win over any woman since he’s cranky and inclined to complain, and even he isn’t sure why Joan decided to marry him. At the same time, the script doesn’t vilify him or Luke, and the two even start to get along before the movie is over. To be clear, this is a rom-com, and not the sort of movie where Joan would get both guys, and I wouldn’t even say it is the sort of movie where Joan’s ultimate choice is all that shocking. But the movie is sweet and heartfelt in its own way, so that counts for a lot.
That said, I wouldn’t say it is the best of its genre (rom-com or afterlife comedy), but it will probably satisfy audiences. The various afterlife scenarios advertised in the waiting area where most of the movie’s action takes place are amusing, and there are a couple of good laughs to be had. There’s just a part of me that wishes it had been a little more creative and insane in its afterlife setting. To be sure, the movie hints at that sort of thing, but I just wanted to see more of that. Then again, how this afterlife works is probably not the movie’s goal so much as saying whether youthful passion or a lifetime of memories will win out in the end. That may not make for the sort of movie I really wanted the movie to be, but it was also a sweet sort of story that works for the living and the dead.
Grade: B+
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