"I can see -- hah! -- right through you!": review of Death Becomes Her

Meryl Streep and Goldie Hawn's impressive physical comedy -- with rubbery, expressive faces and slapstick timing -- really make Death Becomes Her.  Competing for the affections of plastic surgeon and undertaker Ernest [played by Bruce Willis], Madeline [Streep] and Helen [Hawn] characters ingest a magical elixir that guarantees perfect youth. Unfortunately, the formula does not guarantee perfect invulnerability, so Madeline and Helen prevail upon Ernest to do their heavy-duty make-up and maintenance. Will they tempt Ernest  to immortality? Will they be able to keep themselves together [literally]? Who really ends up with immortality in the end? 

With dry wit, the script deftly skewers the modern equation of youth with beauty and happiness; Streep and Hawn, masters of zingy delivery, drop bons mots that kept me chuckling. They play their constant goat-getting with such relish that the fact of their misery goes slightly less noticed until the end, when they attend Ernest's funeral and learn that, through his kindness, charity, sense of humor and good works, as well as his descendants, he has truly reached immortality.

On a vampiric note, I enjoyed Death Becomes Her for its investigation of the flip side of immortality. Madeline and Helen's physical fragility exemplifies a damning and unexpected consequence of living forever. [I particularly liked Madeline's confrontation with the medical establishment. Her controversion of all laws of physics drives the examining physician to drink.] Meanwhile, Ernest, who thinks of immortality as boring, lonely and pointless, provides the philosophical argument for a finite lifespan.

[Filed under "vampires" for treatment of immortality.]

I'm trapped in the Labyrinth with only a pink computer for communication. Also Jareth is being mean.

I'm about 10 years late to the game, but this checklist for writers of Laby fanfic makes me crack up. It reminds me of the episodically long fanfic via E-mail I did with one of my friends during my first year of college and into the summer. I don't even remember what the plot was, but Jareth kept dragging us back and forth out of the Labyrinth. If I recall accurately, the Labyrinth was losing magic, and, for some reason, my friend and I had to be the ones to fix it. 

The one clever innovation we had was that we would write each other messages and occasionally IMs as if we were in plot ["I just had the weirdest experience; Jareth yanked me into the Labyrinth again..."], and I believe there was some writing in character from Jareth's point of view too. He, by the way, was immature, selfish, explosive, infuriating, manipulative, annoying and thoroughly unredeemable, which proved problematic as we struggled to find a justification for helping out the King of the Dickwads Goblins.

Anyway, we stopped writing after HUNDREDS of single-spaced pages. As we trailed off, I was stuck in the Labyrinth with only a pink computer for a communications device! OH NO!!! The non-ending ending amuses me because it makes me think of something like Dispatches From The Labyrinth. 

Now I'm getting nostalgic. I should look back at that file. [Yes, I still have it all in one file and NO YOU CAN'T READ IT.]

Today's word: "pillowy"

Lev Grossman describes the style of Stephenie Meyer, whose garbologous vampire train wrecks are the object of my current mini-obsession, as "pillowy...distinctly reminiscent of Internet fan fiction."  A beautifully evocative adjective, yes? Still rather vague in this sentence, though. I think of a "pillowy" book as one you can take to bed: a comfortable, predictable story that leaves you feeling warm, unchallenged and happy. Since "pillowy" literally means "like a pillow" or "soft," Grossman seems to have something in mind more along the lines of "squishy, sentimental and lacking in true substance." I'd argue that Meyer's books are "pillowy=comfortable and soothing" because they are "pillowy=sentimental and light."

I also think "pillowy" should be removed from its derogatory relegation because it's perfect for so many other things: the warm rounded curves of the Green Mountains, the gentle hills of cumulus clouds on a summer day, the layered mounds of petals in a rose flower, the frothy and cool sensations of Key Lime pie, the undulant stillness of floating in a calm body of water, the comfortable portions of a loved one that you like to rest your head against and, of course, the yielding mountains of bedclothes upon which you drop into dreams.

Previous entries in the Stephenie Meyer series are here: #1, #2, #3 and #4.