Eternity Review

A Pleasant but Mostly Forgettable Rom-Com About a Love Triangle in the Afterlife

By: Marc Kozak

Eternity

A Pleasant but Mostly Forgettable Rom-Com About a Love Triangle in the Afterlife

By: Marc Kozak

Stories about the afterlife are always inherently interesting — since no one knows what it really looks like, every interpretation is limited only by the imagination of the interpreter. Half of the fun of fiction set in the great beyond is seeing the different ways in which various artists create rules for a plane of existence that doesn't have to have any. Curiously, most of these heavenly (or hellish) creations aren't usually too far off from reality, often imagining some sort of bureaucracy to deal with the daily influx of souls. Movies like Hirokazu Kore-eda's "After Life" or shows like The Good Place look and feel a lot like life on regular ol' Earth, give or take a magical talking animal or interdimensional railway.

David Freyne's "Eternity" starts off strong as we get to know the rules of a particularly silly purgatory, but the high concept slowly fades into nothing more than a backdrop for a sweet but unspectacular romantic comedy that seems content to deliver simple, Hallmark-card morals about love. Freyne does his best to zhuzh up a 2022 Black List screenplay from Pat Cunnane, but a striking retro/Mad Men-esque visual style and solid performances from a few charming stars can't completely paper over what is essentially a basic love triangle with limited emotional appeal.

After a comically sad accidental death, a grouchy old man named Larry wakes up as his younger self (Miles Teller) in a crowded and bustling way station. He eventually connects with his AC (Afterlife Coordinator) who tells him that, yes, he is dead, and he only has a week to decide what kind of afterlife he'd like to spend eternity in. His available options sound like a bunch of brochures from a cheap hotel, including less than awe-inspiring places like Casino World, Smokers’ World (“cancer can’t kill you twice”), Weimar World (“now with 100% less Nazis!”), Paris Land, and Eternal Spring. To make the decision even more difficult, once you choose a world, you're stuck there until the end of time. It's a pretty bleak view of our eternal reward; being stuck in an all-inclusive beach resort "until the sun explodes, and then maybe even longer after that” sounds much closer to hell than heaven.

" The high concept slowly fades into nothing more than a backdrop for a sweet but unspectacular romantic comedy that seems content to deliver simple, Hallmark-card morals about love. "

If he's going to be stuck in one of these places for that long, Larry would prefer to wait for his long-time wife Joan (Elizabeth Olsen), who was already near death thanks to cancer at the time of Larry's death. As luck would have it, she does show up a few days later, but quickly discovers to the surprise of all that her first husband Luke (Callum Turner) is waiting for her as well; he's spent the last 67 years hanging around in this purgatory after he died fighting in the Korean War and wants his chance to convince Joan to spend eternity with him instead.

It's a clever little set-up with some high emotional stakes, punctuated by a lot of good gags about life in this strange purgatory that looks a lot like a worn-down hotel and conference center. Larry's AC (Da'Vine Joy Randolph) tries to give the painfully plain and unromantic Larry some last-minute tips to help him tip the scales, but seems resigned to the idea that any woman in her right mind would choose to spend eternity with the buff and swoon-worthy Luke, with whom Joan has always wondered what her life would've been like had he not been taken so young. And yet, even though Joan and Larry's long relationship had its many ups and downs over the years, it was still the life that Joan knew the best, complete with children and a lifetime of memories.

The second act is basically Larry and Luke trying to discredit the other and/or prove that they are Joan's best choice. Poor Joan doesn't know what to do, even as her own AC (the delightfully sassy John Early) is constantly telling her that her choice should be the sexy Luke in a landslide. Elizabeth Olsen is given an especially tough task, playing a role that could easily feel like nothing more than a trophy for both of the male characters to compete for, but she does a terrific job of winning the audience's affection by pushing for her own boundaries and not giving in to the increasingly pathetic tactics of her two desperate husbands. Olson and Teller also do an admirable job of giving their "younger selves" the voice and mannerisms of the elderly people who they were when they passed away, adding just enough crankiness and self-awareness to make it feel like they were two people who have lived together for decades.

And yet, a lot of promising areas are left unexplored. We get just enough world building of the afterlife to hook our interest, but not enough to truly be satisfying. The movie's most interesting moment is when Joan is on the run from a kind of afterlife security, being chased while her memories collapse around her like falling Hollywood sets in a surreal scene that evokes "Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind." It would've been nice to spend a lot more time outside of the genre's comfort zone, with a little more ambition devoted to a potentially wackier and more energetic setting.

It also doesn't help that the movie's overall theme — that our lives have meaning because they are brief and maybe heaven is our time spent on Earth — is slightly undercut by the fact that Joan turns down a few options that seem to make more sense. The idea that all three people spend eternity in the same place is rejected out of hand, even though that feels like the most logical solution. Joan initially makes a different decision, influenced by her recently deceased friend (Olga Merediz) who moves on to an afterlife designed to make her and only her happy. But that doesn't stick; the movie demands Joan make a choice, for better or for worse.

In the end, "Eternity" is harmless fun, a breezy and charming affair that introduces big questions but doesn't dwell on them, happy for the music to swell and events to build into a classical rom-com ending that will hopefully produce a few tears. And it's pretty successful in doing so — it's just hard to escape the feeling that there might have been something greater here with a bit more fearlessness.