It’s time for me to venture into another review and I found this one on my DVR so called up 2 of my girlfriends, watched it and thought I would make a go of it. I never would have thought that Meryl Streep would have done a horror movie, but I was wrong Death Becomes Her is actually a horror-comedy by director Robert Zemeckis who most know him from Back to the Future.

The film starts with Madeline (Meryl Streep) who is an aging Broadway actress with her looks going and not as popular as she once was. While in her dressing room her long-time rival Helen (Goldie Hawn) stops by with her fiancé, Dr. Ernest Menville (Bruce Willis), and undertaker, but she doesn’t want Madeline to meet him because in the past she has “stolen” the men away from her. Of course, that’s exactly what happens and in the end Madeline and Ernest get married. Some years have gone by and her looks have gotten worse as well. Helen wants revenge and sends Madeline an invitation to a party Helen is hosting but before she goes, she wants to get more plastic surgery to look younger, but it’s not possible since she just had some. Mr. Chagall (Ian Ogilvy), the star’s guru to youthful looks, suggests she go see Lisle Von Rhuman (Isabella Rossellini), but rejects him at first, until she sees Helen and how young she looks. After the party she goes to see one of her boyfriends who’s seeing a younger woman and she’s had it and finally goes to see Lisle. Madeline then buys the magic potion where she will look younger and never age, she just can’t share the secret with anyone, and it will go on for ten years of perfect, unchanged beauty and at the end of that time she will have to disappear from the public eye forever. While she’s there Helen pays a visit to her mansion to visit Ernest and they start to plot Madeline’s death. When she gets home, she gets into an argument with her husband and is pushed down the steps and he think she’s dead however she gets up (a bit deformed) and is alive after all. As time goes on Madeline realizes that Helen has taken this same potion and that’s why she looks wonderful as well. They try to make Ernest take it, but he won’t. It’s quite comical how everything comes together at the end of the movie.

The point of this story is really about vanity and how some famous people only think of looking good and nothing else. Is that really a way to live? The movie is worth watching to get some laughs but that’s all.

TAGLINES:

• Some people will go to any lengths to stay young forever. But Madeline Ashton and her old friend Helen Sharp are about to go TOO far.
• From the Director of Who Framed Roger Rabbit and Back to the Future
• Your basic black comedy.
• In one small bottle… The fountain of youth. The secret of eternal life. The power of an ancient potion. Sometimes it works… sometimes it doesn’t.

IMDb Rating: 6.6/10

3C Rating: 6.0/10