Review: Eternity

While the idea of the afterlife as a bureaucratic nightmare is one that keeps on giving, Eternity's riff is a uniquely individualistic one: after you die, you get seven days in a kind of beyond-the-grave convention center to pick the ideal afterlife for you. Once you choose, that's it: no going back.

For a romantic comedy, it's kind of a grim set-up. Unless your loved one dies at the same time - good news for car crash fatalities, presumably - there's pretty much zero chance of spending eternity together. Maybe whoever designed it (in this afterlife it's a bureaucracy all the way up) figured that, as no love could last forever, it was better to pull the band-aid off right at the start. Shame they didn't tell Luke (Callum Turner) that.

For Larry and Joan, living out a slow-driving retirement, Luke is just a faded sepia photograph of someone who died in the war (multiple jokes are made about how the Korean War is not really "the war"). But when Larry chokes on a pretzel at a gender reveal party, he wakes up dead, forty years younger (now Miles Teller), and in an afterlife where his "AC" (afterlife counselor) Anna (Da'Vine Joy Randolph) is pointing him at an exit.

He learns a few things - yes, you can stick around if you're willing to take on a menial gig; no, you can't leave a message behind for your loved one - and with the deadline looming he's got no choice but to cross his fingers and hope Joan can just guess where he's gone and follow... until she (now Elizabeth Olsen) also turns up. Chalk up a win for cancer.

Just one catch: friendly bartender Luke is also the Luke that Joan loved and married way, way back... before he died in the war. He waited for her, and now they can finally have the life together they dreamed of. Bad news for Larry, but he'll get over 65 years of marriage soon enough, right?

The backdrop here is fine for a bunch of throwaway jokes about the various eternities, but it's obviously constructed nature is a little distracting. The various rules largely seem designed to throw obstacles in the way of this particular trio; there doesn't need to be a good reason why you're stuck in the afterlife you choose for all eternity, there just needs to be a reason.

Fortunately the central dilemma plays out well, despite a slow stretch in the middle where Joan gets to try out a future with one then the other. Fun performances from all three don't exactly hurt; it's the kind of story where there's no bad guys, just someone destined to miss out. 

Teller is the standout, constantly channeling an old man while retaining (regaining?) his youth, while Turner's dreamboat facade constantly cracks to reveal little humanising details. Olsen has strong chemistry with both - though that chemistry takes different forms, which is kind of the point of the whole thing.

Attractive people struggling with love is pretty much always a winner so long as you don't screw it up; despite always taking its ridiculous premise seriously, Eternity has a bubbly sense of humour that manages to breath a little life into love after death.

- Anthony Morris