Eternity Film Review: A Sweet, High-Concept Romantic Comedy

It’s become boring in itself to complain about all the remakes, reboots and sequels dominating release schedules. But I’m going to do it anyway. Your local multiplex right now is likely showing a slew of follow-up films: Wicked: For Good, Zootropolis 2, Five Nights at Freddy’s (wait for it) 2 and Avatar: Fire and Ash.

I’m not saying these are terrible movies, although I do think that some are skating by on name recognition. But I’d love if it more people could find and enjoy original films when they come along. Especially when the film is as charming as Eternity.

Eternity is a romantic comedy that owes a debt to the warm, high-concept comedies of the early 1990s. Think of Mel Brooks’ Defending Your Life or Harold Ramis’ Groundhog Day.

The story begins with elderly couple Joan and Larry causing a major neighbourhood tailback as they drive with excruciating slowness to their great-grandchild’s gender reveal party, bickering all the while. Joan, it turns out, has terminal cancer, but Larry beats her to the punch by choking on a pretzel and keeling over before the celebration has even started.

He comes to on a train, pink confetti still in his hair. Larry is now in his thirties again (and played by Miles Teller). After death, you see, everyone is returned – in appearance, at least – to the age at which they were at their happiest. For Larry, that was in the early years of his marriage to Joan.   

The train is taking him to The Junction, from which point he can choose his ideal afterlife. So, from Larry’s perspective, all is well. All he needs to do is pack for the beach-themed paradise of his dreams and leave word for Joan to follow him when she arrives.

It doesn’t take long for Joan – now similarly de-aged (and played by Elizabeth Olsen) – to find herself on a similar train. Larry luckily bumps into her before he departs and it would appear that they’re halfway to heaven already. But a complication arises with the appearance of her dreamboat first husband Luke (Callum Turner), a soldier who was killed at war and has been waiting for her at The Junction for 67 years.

A24 Films

Joan can only choose one afterlife and, once she’s made her decision, she can’t change her mind. So, will she spend eternity with the man she never had a chance to live a life with, or the one she did?

Pat Cunnane’s screenplay has been floating around Hollywood for a while, waiting for the right team to bring it to life. In 2022, it topped The Black List – a survey of the most admired, unproduced scripts, as voted for by the industry’s production executives – and was finally picked up and funded by A24.

It’s always encouraging when this happens: a film concept is spotted and produced for its great ideas alone, and not because a studio bought the rights to a video game, or a snack food, or a popular branded cheese (Lunchables: The Movie is inevitable on a long enough timeline).

A24 has made a name for itself doing just that, either producing or distributing Uncut Gems, Bodies Bodies Bodies, Ti West’s X trilogy, The Zone of Interest, Love Lies Bleeding and many more of the most interesting films of recent years.

And Eternity has great ideas aplenty. The Junction itself is an amusingly dated hotel and exhibition centre complex, crammed with stalls aggressively touting different afterlives. There are the obvious options, such as Beach World and Mountain World. Then there are niche offerings: Capitalist World; Weimar World, which offers all the fun of Cabaret, minus the Nazis; Nudist World, which is always at a balmy 72 degrees. There’s also the highly popular Man-Free World, on its 443rd incarnation and still over-subscribed.

A24 Films

Then there are the characters themselves. It’s Elizabeth Olsen’s film and she imbues Joan with screwball comic energy – she is, after all, a woman in her eighties who suddenly finds that her joints work again – but she’s given likeable support by Teller and Turner.

At this afterlife waystation, the recently deceased are assigned an Afterlife Coordinator, and Larry and Joan’s are a squabbling pair, entertainingly played by Da’Vine Joy Randolph and John Early. These low-level bureaucrats are battling the weariness of a job that’s grown meaningless over time and at odds over what they consider the happiest of happy endings for their clients.

A24 Films

Director David Freyne must get credit for the success of this ensemble, as well as for stretching the budget in some imaginative ways to create artefacts of the afterlife, such as the archive tunnels – a faded end-of-pier style attraction in which memories are displayed in dramatised vignettes.

There’s also the pleasing fact that there are plenty of nods to queer culture, offsetting the Moonraker-style obsession with heterosexual pairing – a benefit of having a gay director. Even that inevitable rom-com staple, the gay best friend, is employed in a fresh and surprising way.

It’s not a seamless film, however. There are some fascinating glimpses into a sinister side of the afterlife which, disappointingly, are not followed up on, some of the jokes don’t quite hit, and the ending is easily guessable – although the twists along the way are not.

This is the time of year when we’re ready to succumb to some cosy feelings and, if you’re not in the mood for the bells and reindeer of a Christmas movie, Eternity will furnish you with a similarly warm glow.

Eternity opens in the UK on 5 December.