I've been taking my chances with the Monday Mystery Movie at my local Marcus theater for some of the new movies in 2025, and it's paid off pretty much every time. In the case of earlier this month's screening, I got to see Eternity, the rom-com fantasy movie from David Freyne, which stars Miles Teller, Elizabeth Olsen and Callum Turner. The story about what happens in the afterlife, or more specifically, what's sort of a waiting room for the afterlife, had me flashing back to another great romantic comedy fantasy. I'm talking about Defending Your Life, a '90s movie that really doesn't get talked about enough.
In Eternity, Elizabeth Olsen's Joan lives a long life, and when she dies, she reconnects with her first husband, Luke (Callum Turner), as well as her recently deceased second husband, Larry (Miles Teller). As you can imagine, a bit of a love triangle forms as Joan has to decide if she wants to spend eternity with Luke, who died young (in the Korean War), or Larry, the man she was married to for decades.
What Is Defending Your Life
If you haven't seen it, the 1991 comedy was directed by and stars Albert Brooks as a man who dies in a car accident and finds himself in Judgment City, the place where souls go to defend their lives. In a way, this is also a bit of a courtroom drama, as Brooks' Daniel Miller learns he has to work with an attorney to prove to the judges that he lived a good enough life to earn a ticket onward, to whatever comes next. If he fails, he'll be sent back to try life all over again.
The rom-com part of Defending Your Life comes into play when Daniel meets Julia (Meryl Streep), an also-deceased woman who's there to defend her own life. As she and Daniel get to know one another between proceedings, they quickly start to fall for one another. The story has them both pondering the lives they led before they were cut short, and getting to know each other in this sort of limbo space while they wait to learn their fates.
The Thing That Really Made Me Want To Rewatch Defending Your Life After Eternity
As a fan of quirky comedies that explore a mysterious aspect of humanity -- in this case, what happens to us after we die -- I absolutely adored Eternity. Not only does it do a great job in exploring what seems like an impossible question for Olsen's character, but it also has a lot of fun with the premise of a "choose-your-eternity" decision. You see, there are any number of eternities a person can pick for their afterlife, whether it's a mountain retreat, a beachy setting, or something even more specific, like Smokers World. But once you pick your eternity, that's that. You're there for literally ever, so you better make the right choice.
The attention to detail on the proposed eternities, and the place where the deceased are staying while they make their decision, is probably the thing I liked best about Eternity. And I'd say the same about Defending Your Life. There's a reason I still love and rewatch this movie more than thirty years after its release. Yes, I love the story of Daniel and Julia falling in love, and the idea of revisiting key moments in your life to determine how well you lived it, but I especially love the setting of Judgment City.
Everything from the different hotels guests stay in, to the idea of being able to eat as much as you want (and the food is always the best you've had) makes Defending Your Life's main setting so much fun to watch. There's also a Past Lives Pavilion, which lets visitors see who they were in some of their past lives. Defending Your Life, being a movie that addresses past lives, is one thing that really sets it apart from Eternity's proposed afterlife scenario.
I don't know what happens when we die, and I don't believe the scenarios presented in these movies are exactly it. But they sure do make for interesting settings to explore love and life and what it all means in a movie. If you haven't seen Eternity, it's worth checking out while it's in theaters! And obviously, the same goes for Defending Your Life.
Defending Your Life is available to rent or buy on Amazon. Or, if you're interested in Black Friday entertainment deals, Amazon has a Black Friday deal going on this week for the Defending Your Life Criterion Collection Blu-ray.
