Since when is Miles Teller a bigger star then Elizabeth Olsen? Like, really? Who thinks this way? Is there anyone, besides his immediate family, that would go out to see a Miles Teller movie? They are definitely implying that by having Miles Teller over Elizabeth Olsen in the credits. Anyhow…

Larry dies and is sent to a limbo of sorts to choose an afterlife. However, he does not want to do this without his wife. However, soon after when his wife, Joan, dies, the situation is not as simple, because Joan had been married before marrying Larry. It just happened that the first husband died in the Korean war, and that husband has been waiting for Joan for 67 years. Now Joan must make a decision on who to live the rest of her eternal existence with.

I like the worldbuilding. It’s actually horrifying, but it is interesting. No one really knows why or how things are as they are. They just keep things running. This means, among other things, consultants to help people choose, people to maintain this limbo, people to run certain parts of the different places to go, people to change the time of day (it’ll make sense if you ever see the movie), security and so forth. However, what’s horrifying is that you have a week to make your decision and after that you are stuck in the world of your choice. It is very non-committal from a religious point of view but, as an atheist, I don’t really mind. I do kind of find funny that this world is as arbitrary as ours in so many ways.

Now, people are selling these places aggressively. There’s flyers, and salesmen and ads everywhere. So, someone needs to get people into their places. There’s even grifting going on to get people to a certain world. However, all of these little worlds seem to be quite monotonous. Like, I like to travel. I went to Torshavn last year. I liked it very much. Would I like to spend the rest of my life there? Preferably not. I would get bored. Especially, if I had to spend the rest of my existence there.

I like variety, I like change, I like doing new things. So, if I had to choose, I would have to rely on advertising to find myself a place where I would be happy forever. For example, one of the places that we hear about but never see, is Paris, I think it was 1960s Paris more precisely, where everyone speaks English but with an accent. Okay, so I’ve been to Paris a couple of times. It’s a terrible place. It’s chaotic, it’s dirty, it’s often rundown, the locals hate you or try to scam you, the food is not nearly as good as they claim and often quite monotonous, unless you are able to find those hidden-away places… And that’s a place where you want to spend eternity? Surely, the people who created this place within this movie, didn’t feel the need to make rude waiters and add the dirt, but if these are just half-hearted attempts at presenting these places, they are not going to be that good either, so there might very well be rude waiters and shitty menus.

The problem is that to me any eternity in anywhere would be a nightmare. Unless… I could get a job designing these places. Maybe that would be it. Although, I might be too perfectionist for this version of the world.

Anyhow, Elizabeth Olsen is good in her role as the person who needs to make the decision. There’s a similar feel to the old screwball comedies from the 30s and 40s, but with a modern sensibility. They work very hard to find a balance between the two options, although I kind of wished for a different ending. Not a different man, but maybe just find some other angle, because of the way I see this world as a big problem onto itself. I guess they weren’t ready to start a rebellion of some kind.

At the same time, I’m pretty far from the core audience, so they shouldn’t have tried to do something for me. If what happens is a fantasy for the intended audience, let them have it. Maybe I’m not supposed to be thinking about the philosophical implications of all of this.