DEATH BECOMES HER
A film review by Frank Maloney
Copyright 1992 Frank Maloney
DEATH BECOMES HER is a movie directed by Robert Zemeckis, from a script by Martin Donovan and David Koepp. It stars Meryl Streep, Goldie Hawn, Bruce Willis, and Isabella Rosellini. Rated PG-13 for violence and nudity.
DEATH BECOMES HER is an occult black comedy, neither qualifier being an easy one to bring off successfully. LOVE AT FIRST BITE and YOUNG FRANKENSTEIN did this neatly, but a hundred other efforts have failed to find that perfect mixture of camp, horror, and conscientious scenery-chewing. DEATH almost succeeds in its aspirations, never quite going over the top, but it works as entertainment; it is bold, inventive, chance-taking, and a lot of fun.
Of course, no small amount of the fun arises from the amazing, seamless special effects. This is Hollywood's most expensive film in this genre and the money was well spent. The folks at Lucasfilms' Industrial Light and Magic Company employed a rich vocabulary of computer-generated, live-action effects of the sort we would normally expect to be possible only in animated cartoons.
Robert Zemeckis (WHO FRAMED ROGER RABBIT, ROMANCING THE STONE) found the right cartoon visual style and comedy tone to highlight both his f/x and his stars, and to carry us over the rough spots in the script by Martin Donovan and David Koepp. The script is the weakest element of the movie; it has an important satiric point to make about aging in a society that prizes youth and is rapidly aging itself. Unfortunately, the script never finds a way to give this point the necessary power and force. The set up is a long time developing and exposes some holes in the plot. Some of the scenes are strictly of the slow-boat-to-China variety, some are open to charges of prejudice against women, against the overweight, and so forth. All of which distracts from the point of the film: the price to be paid for immortal youth.
The cast, like the special effects and the direction, help overcome, or at least obscure, the script problems. Meryl Streep is nothing short of brilliant as the aging, frightened star, the insecure grande dame. The first time we see her is in the funniest parody of the Broadway musical since Robert Preston gasped and panted his way in drag through the finale of VICTOR/VICTORIA, and possibly since the "Springtime for Hitler" sequence in THE PRODUCERS. She trots out a rich store of expressions, gestures, and slapstick schtick. In our household, her line "*Now* a warning!" has become a by-word, a running joke, but we still can't do it as well as La Streep. Goldie Hawn handles her triple-part effectively. But it is Bruce Willis who is the greatest surprise and therefore the greatest pleasure, in its way; he is the broken wimp caught between two self-obsessed, manipulating viragos; he is our, the audience's, spokesman and as such becomes the moral center and the hero, the point of light in the blackness.
I found DEATH BECOMES HER an pleasant way to spend a couple of hours and can recommend it to you for its virtues. For its failings, I recommend you pay matinee prices.
-- Frank Richard Aloysius Jude Maloney
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