This might be a generalisation, but it felt like the late-1980s/early-1990s were all about high concept comedies, usually involving time travel, reincarnation, body swapping, and the afterlife. I remember the video cover for the Albert Brooks film, Defending Your Life (1991), but watching it had eluded me until the Albert Brooks collection on the Criterion Channel. At this stage, it’s revered by comedy fans and basically served as the inspiration for Michael Schur’s The Good Place TV series. However, the film has its own style and tone (and I would add much better than The Good Place), effectively coming from Brooks’ specific form of neurotic humour and conceptual approach to his movies. It’s about an ad exec Daniel (played by Brooks) who dies in a head on collision with a bus after singing along to Barbra Streisand on Compact Disc (new technology!) in his new BMW. Finding himself in Judgement City, which is not quite heaven, but a place of purgatory where the recently deceased await trial for how they have developed on Earth; have they conquered their fears and progressed despite using only five percent of the brains? If their trial results in a judgment that they haven’t developed, they are sent back to Earth to keep learning. If they pass the judgement, they progress to the next stage of existence where they can go on to comprehend the universe. Confused? It all makes sense when explained by the shark-grin smile of Rip Torn as Brooks’ Defense Attorney (in a winning performance, which essentially sets the blueprint for his work in The Larry Sanders Show). During a nine day trial where certain days of his life are played back to the court with tough prosecutor Lee Grant in session, Brooks’ character finds an instant connection with another person, Julia (played by Meryl Streep in a breezy, charismatic performance), who lived a more enviable life of courage and sacrifice. I do really love Real Life and Lost In America, but Defending Your Life feels like the most satisfying of Albert Brooks’ films that he has directed because, alongside the witty one-liners, conceptually funny ideas and overall cinematic approach, the romance between Brooks and Streep lands, and the sentimentality feels earned and is sweetly affecting. There are so many great bits from the comedy club scene to the ones in which the lawyers lord their advanced brain powers over the “small brains” (aka humans) to the ways in which Judgement City functions as an idyllic mirror of human existence minus the flaws (you can eat all you want and everything is delicious!). A funny, clever movie. Recommended.
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