Defending Your Life
Defending Your Life is a 1991 American romantic comedy-fantasy film about a man who finds himself on trial in the afterlife, where proceedings examine his lifelong fears, to determine whether he'll be (yet again) reincarnated on Earth, or move on the next phase of existence.Los Angeles advertising executive Daniel Miller dies in a car accident on his 39th birthday, mainly due to his distractedness, and is sent to Judgment City, a kind of temporary paradise for the recently deceased.[3] Daniel's defense attorney, Bob Diamond, explains that people from Earth use so little of their brains that they spend most of their lives functioning based on their fears.During his stay in Judgment City, Daniel meets and falls in love with Julia, a recently deceased woman who lived a seemingly perfect life of courage and generosity, especially compared to his.The scene pulls back to show that the entire event is being watched on closed-circuit TV by Diamond, Foster, and the judges in the chamber where Daniel's hearing occurred.Shirley MacLaine has a cameo appearance as the holographic host of the "Past Lives Pavilion"—a reference to her publicly known belief in reincarnation."[4] An early draft of the script included a different ending where Daniel is sent back as a horse, but Brooks found himself gradually drawn into the love story aspect of the plot and rewrote it accordingly.[9] In January 1991, more details about the plot were released, describing it as involving "a neurotic advertising executive who dies in a car accident and then must defend his earthly actions before a kind of reincarnation review board".The consensus summarizes: "With Defending Your Life, writer-director-star Albert Brooks softens his trademark caustic humor -- and proves he's every bit as funny when he's tugging heartstrings."[15] Variety called it an "inventive and mild bit of whimsy" in which Brooks has a "little fun with the Liliom idea of being judged in a fanciful afterlife, but he doesn't carry his conceit nearly far enough.[18] Richard Schickel wrote:[19] Defending Your Life is better developed as a situation than it is as a comedy (though there are some nice bits, like a hotel lobby sign that reads, WELCOME KIWANIS DEAD).It features 1.85:1 anamorphic widescreen formatting, subtitles in English, French, Spanish and Portuguese, cast and crew information, and the film's theatrical trailer.