Death Becomes Her

Hee-hee. I think I don’t want to be forever young. Definitely not anymore. A really wonderful comedy with the great Bruce Willis and the decomposing divas, Meryl Streep and Goldie Hawn. The screenplay was excellently penned and Zemeckis has a feel for making a funnily mysterious atmosphere. A great and mainly edifying watch. (12/07/2007)

Zemeckis intellectually on top of his game. With his creative signature, he perfectly hit the retreat of classic Hollywood and the advent of the modern and predatory 90s, the dream and money factory. It succeeded both cinematically (revolutionary visual effects, pace of storytelling) and plot-wise (lots of biting satirical allusions and undertones). In places, however, this tale is extremely exaggerated and loud, or a bit out of touch with reality. So even though there are quite a lot of life tenets, it's often difficult to properly enjoy them under all the make-up and gratuitous shouting. (23/01/2018)

Mediocre by Zemeckis’s standards, but the story itself hides a lot of truths. The desire for eternal youth...I can't count how many such eternal young women I see on the street. (11/05/2003)

The film director sometimes makes a mistake, and Zemeckis experienced it for the first time in his career right here. I do like dark humor, as well as sarcasm and exaggeration, but in this case, the particular elements were not properly dosed. (05/08/2006)

Zemeckis' excellent satire of Hollywood as a space for constant returns to the limelight that are all the more frightening and unnatural.  At the same time, it's actually a bit of a (God knows whether intentional) satire of himself, where the amount of information he packs into the one overlong, extremely realization-intensive shot here is almost laughable. Not to mention that a good half of the film takes place in mirrors. The over-the-top nature of almost all the performances gives the impression that the entire crew must have burst out laughing just after editing (the seduction of Goldie Hawn); Bruce Willis, cast totally against type, is inherently funny; the over-exploited prima donna Meryl Streep makes a scene just by being in it, and Isabella Rosselini is simply delectable. And Fabio makes a cameo! Anyway, it's got a really good and cohesive script with lots of ideas and the longest night in a movie ever (starting from the arrival at the book launch and ending with Ernest getting hit with a vase). "What will the neighbors say?!" "Ernest, in the 12 years we've lived in Los Angeles, have you ever seen a neighbor?" (05/06/2021)