[Last Film I Saw] Death Becomes Her (1992) [4/10]

Title: Death Becomes Her
Year: 1992
Country: USA
Language: English
Genre: Comedy, Fantasy
Director: Robert Zemeckis
Writers:
Martin Donovan
David Koepp
Music: Alan Silvestri
Cinematography: Dean Cundey
Cast:
Meryl Streep
Goldie Hawn
Bruce Willis
Isabella Rossellini
Alaina Reed-Hall
Sydney Pollack
Ian Ogilvy
Adam Storke
Nancy Fish
Mary Ellen Trainor
Mimi Kennedy
Rating: 4/10

The overhanging message of this Zemeckis’ dark comedy is “if a woman doesn’t have ageless skin, immortality means nothing”, that doesn’t smell politically correct, right?

Three big names in Hollywood then, Streep, Willis and Hawn (arguably Hawn was on the wane) gather in a morbid comedy teasing death and immortality, sounds a bravado project for Streep and Willis, whose bent for outright chick flick is put to the test. Also after the huge success of BACK TO THE FUTURE trilogy, Zemeckis is a safe bet to polish the absurd special effects, alas, the final work is still cringeworthy and hard to overlook its glaring vilification of a woman’s worth and the blatant bandwagon of male chauvinism. I blame the writers Martin Donovan and David Koepp, they are terrible misogynists.

The rivalry between Helen (Hawn) and Madeline (Streep), two old schoolmates are diverting at first, who doesn’t want to watch Hawn and Streep in a cat-fight? But the character execution is awful, Helen starts as an sympathetic victim, who loses his fiancé Ernest (Willis) to a haughty Madeline, a hammy actress, after a 7-year-post-breakup-weight-increase spell and another 8 year of clandestine dormancy, she mystifyingly morphs into some lascivious slut and even writes a book about skin-care, in hindsight, one of the side effects of the magic potion must be personality-remoulding. Her revenge plan goes amiss when Madeline goes to an exotic woman Lisle Von Rhuman (Rossellini) for help and drinks the elixir to procure immortality. Then comes the cat-fight, a bit too late and too droll, it turns out both are the clients of Miss Von Rhuman, so they puerilely reconcile, from then on, the plot takes a tumble to let Ernest occupies the moral high ground while the two female immortals retreat to sidebars as vacuous vases, all they do is screaming and urging him to drink the elixir as well (oh, I forget to mention Ernest is a one-and-only cosmetic surgeon), that’s why he is so vital to them. Finally the nondescript Ernest is not only the prey of two women, but also the hero who refutes to imperishability and heroically proselytises us the orthodox meaning of eternal life in his own funeral! Enough is enough, the twaddle is beyond truism.

The ridicule is ceaseless but threadbare, Hawn and Willis has done something worse, but it is so shameful to watch Rossellini flaunts her not so perfect nudity (as the age of 38) at the expense of her exotic eroticism to pander to the heterosexual male audience, and it is a blemish in Streep’s pristine filmography too, although the role is a cinch for her, I do love the opening singing sequences, a musical pastiche of SWEET BIRD OF YOUTH, that’s the film should be made instead!

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