Death Becomes Her (1992)

Talk about a movie ahead of its time...

Death Becomes Her is a dark comedy about how far people will go to avoid the aging process. This movie came out in 1992 so this is before all the insanity over Botox and teenage boob jobs and stomach stapling. A remake could come out tomorrow and be twice as relevant as when it was originally released. Can't people just get old and ugly and be happy about it? It's the way nature intended it to be.

You can't really ask for a better cast than this. Goldie Hawn (when she's still hot), Meryll Streep (not looking bad herself), and a nerded out Bruce Willis. I know the ladies get a lot of attention in this movie, but Bruce is my hands-down scene stealer. This is the same man who, four years earlier, played John fucking McClane in Die Hard and here he is playing a spineless, nerdy, pussy-whipped bitch and playing it to perfection.

The concept itself is intriguing. Two female rivals consume a potion that allows them to live forever but then they die...only to return reanimated (but still biologically dead). Obviously this odd situation provides for most of the humor of the film. The jokes are solid for a majority of the film, but as soon as Helen dies, the humor comes off a little cartoony. Helen and Madeline are hitting each other with shovels and there's a lot of physical humor, but it all comes off too much like an episode of Tom and Jerry (Awesome show by the way).

And even though it's a neat concept, the story itself is rather weak. You realize after the shovel battle between Helen and Madeline that the movie isn't really going anywhere. The girls hate each other, then they make up and they're friends and realize they'll need Menville to maintain their corpses, and then we're kind of tossed into the climax with Menville rejecting the potion at the castle of the immortals and being chased by dogs and falling off a building and into a swimming pool.

I suppose the ironic thing is that Goldie Hawn now looks like someone who has been dead for about ten years and is trying to hide under a veil of plastic surgery to keep anyone from finding out...

Why It's Awesome: You get to watch two really hot, really dead bitches boss around John McClane.

Best Quote:

Madeline: Bottom's up.

Madeline drinks the potion.

Lisle: Now a warning...

Madeline: NOW a warning?!