Death Becomes Her

Hollywood seems to be the one place where they are crazy about the youth. Where else do people over 30 (actors and writers) feel like they should lie about their age to protect their careers? It’s exactly where plastic surgeons and personal trainers have real job security. David Ansen said in his review, “If fear of aging is as American as apple pie, it's in part because Hollywood, hand in hand with Madison Avenue, has trained us so well to associate happiness, desirability and fun with the sight of a firm tush.” Robert Zemeckis, one of the great directors, has obviously seen this difficulty firsthand. He has made that fear, that obsession, the subject of his black comedy “Death Becomes Her,” released in 1992, where Meryl Streep and Goldie Hawn (Kurt Russell's girlfriend and Kate Hudson’s mother), one that is engaged with pride, the other by revenge, make, as Ansen says, “a Faustian bargain for eternal youth.”

The spoof starts off to a bad and happy start as it sets up the rivalry between the useless, trimming actress Madeline Ashton (Meryl Streep) and her plain childhood friend Helen Sharp (the great Goldie Hawn). When Madeline steals and marries Helen’s fiancé, the famous plastic surgeon Ernest Menville, played by Bruce Willis, and Ansen mentions, “nothing like having the best nip-and-tuck man around the house,” Helen goes into a abrupt decline, gaining 200 pounds and ending up in a mental hospital. What gets her out of depression is the thought of revenge, and when we next see her, seven years later, she has turned her 50-year-old self into a slim and glamorous author of a beauty guide. Ansen said, “And she is ready to ensnare the bedraggled, alcoholic Menville, wretchedly married to Madeline, into her murderous plot.”

Until this time, Zemeckis’s film has a striking resemblance to Streep’s 1989 comedy, “She-Devil.” She’s mainly playing the same self-involved, arrogant character, and playing her with funny evil passion. However, now the film takes a Gothic spin, with a cameo by Isabella Rossellini as the mysterious source of an elixir that will keep Madeline alive, and rejuvenated, forever, even after she’s been murdered.

It’s nice to see Zemeckis making a comedy with this type of edge again. Ansen noted, “"Death Becomes Her," written by Martin Donovan and David Koepp, returns to the abrasive mode of Zemeckis's underrated "Used Cars" (1980).” However, it also has a similarity to the cartoonish physical twists of his “Who Framed Roger Rabbit,” as he has some amazing special effects: Streep shows up with her head, literally, on backward, and Hawn walks along with a see-through hole in her stomach. Zemeckis has always liked technical challenges. Once again he masters them with great style.

Ansen said, “Yet oddly, the more fantastical and grotesque this comedy becomes, the more conventional it seems-and the less it has to say. Somewhere in the middle of the movie, the characters take a back seat to the pyrotechnics, reality is replaced by cliffhangers and Gothic claptrap, and the laughs start to dry up. Satire needs a social context, but the filmmakers have little to say about the culture that created these age-obsessed women.” Still, even when “Death Becomes Her” goes off course, it stays worth watching. The actors are never less than fun to watch. Watch it for the enjoyment of Streep’s and Hawn’s healthy, self-mocking performances, for the chance to see Willis neatly play against type and, not the least of it, for the amazing confused cameo by Sydney Pollack as a doctor trying to fight with the fact that his walking, talking patient is actually dead.

This is definitely a funny movie that everyone should see, if they want to steer away from all the scary stuff out there. Similarly to how “Ghostbusters” is, this one is definitely an enjoyable film that I think everyone will love, especially if they are a Zemeckis fan or a fan of any of the actors in here. Don’t miss the chance to see this movie.

Now with that said, look out tomorrow for the finale of this year’s “Halloween Month.”