Eternity

Since the dawn of the 1930s screwball comedy, the movies have had a ball depicting the first stage of the afterlife as a kind of post-industrial-age bureaucracy in which souls are shuffled through a standardized process before ultimately choosing, winning, or earning their trip to their final destination. The latest spin on this stars Miles Teller and Elizabeth Olsen as Larry and Joan, a couple married for sixty-nine years (played by Barry Primus and Betty Buckley when we first meet them) who die within a week of each other and meet up again in the transfer station/hotel between the mortal world and the afterlife. But another soul has been waiting there for sixty-seven years, Joan's first husband, Luke (Callum Turner), who died in the Korean War shortly after they married. Joan is given a week to decide which of her former husbands she wants to spend eternity with.

This is a good premise, and one I'm surprised none of the myriad other entries of this substantial subgenre have put forth before (maybe they have and I just haven't seen them). The leads all give winning performances. But the screenplay isn't very imaginative, and the direction and editing are sluggish. The internal logic of this particular afterlife bureaucracy is vague and often in conflict with itself, and most attempts at humor undermine the already wobbly emotional stakes. The supporting turns by Da'Vine Joy Randolph and John Early, as the ubiquitous, comical post-corporeal guides who are always part of these stories, wear out their welcome before the film even gets going. Despite all this, Eternity builds to a moving turn into its final act. Unfortunately, it then immediately reverts to its former lackluster self for the climax and conclusion.