Life

...time and end up serving life sentences in the Mississippi State prison. What follows is 60 years of misadventure and colourful characters as the pair serve out their time, planning their escape all the time of course...

I did enjoy watching "Life", more than I expected to anyway, but its not exactly without its problems - not least the very fact that you are never sure if you are watching a comedy, social drama, melodrama ...
...century, the affects of prison life and friendship through, or perhaps because of, adversity yet most of this is glossed over so as not to make it 'too' serious. Equally, it seems the humour has been toned down so as not to undermine the serious parts too much! The problem is quite obvious. Concentrating on two opposing ends of the scale like this doesn't work and ultimately it feels like you are watching a toned down mix of the comedy from the Gene ... more

Despite it receiving a fair number of good reviews(and some really poor ones!) when it was released a couple of years ago, I made a point of avoiding "Life" until it made its way onto terrestrial TV a few days ago. I am not the biggest Eddie Murphy fan and to be honest, when he disappeared from the major circuit around the early 90s after a string of movie flops I really didn't expect to see him make a comeback - not least because a series of fast talking Murphy wannabees seemed to immediately spring up to take his place. I'm also not keen on Martin Lawrence, who seems to be a name you can gauge a movie's poorness by simply by his name appearing on the cast list these days(Black Knight being his latest laugh an hour flop) but together in "Life" these two deliver a movie which is the enjoyable, if not uproariously funny, movie equivalent of angel hair - its there, its curious and then its gone and quickly forgotten leaving very few clues as to what its point and purpose was.

"Life" spans 60 years in the lives of two men thrown together by injustice, beginning in 1932 in Club Spanky and playing out for the rest of the time in a Mississippi prison. Small time hustler Ray Gibson(Murphy) tries to settle some debts with the club's boss by stealing upstanding bank teller Claude Bank's(Lawrence) wallet - only to find it empty as he too was just cleaned out by some loan sharks. One man then left unable to pay his sizable bar bill and the other unable to pay his outstanding gambling debts means they both find themselves set for a long sleep with the fishes - until Ray has a great idea. Its the middle of the prohibition era and Ray knows of a place where they are distilling alcohol and he promises to bring back a truck-load for club owner Spanky if he'll let them both go...

Faced with either death or partnering Ray, Claude makes the tough choice to take part in the bootlegging scheme, pay off his debts and do it all before his new bank teller job starts on Monday. All is going well until a man is murdered and the pair find themselves in the wrong place at the wrong time and end up serving life sentences in the Mississippi State prison. What follows is 60 years of misadventure and colourful characters as the pair serve out their time, planning their escape all the time of course...

I did enjoy watching "Life", more than I expected to anyway, but its not exactly without its problems - not least the very fact that you are never sure if you are watching a comedy, social drama, melodrama or something else entirely. At the core of the story are the lives of two innocent black men being wasted away in a state prison in punishment for a white hate crime they had no hand in. There is an overhanging air of pathos throughout as we are told how family members die, the world changes without them and ultimately the fear of leaving what has become a 1930s timewarp whilst the rest of the world has moved is so horrendous that it culminates in one prisoner commiting suicide when given his release papers. Are you laughing yet? Its an odd backdrop for what is otherwise a comedy with a liberal sprinkling of F-words and occasional gross out moments and in all honesty it doesn't really work. "Life" doesn't really seem to know what it wants to be and that's certainly not to say a movie can't be both funny and serious at the same time but rather that if it intends to do so then it needs to do it with a lot more artistry than is present here.

The serious avenues explored include the treatment of American blacks in the early part of the 20th century, the affects of prison life and friendship through, or perhaps because of, adversity yet most of this is glossed over so as not to make it 'too' serious. Equally, it seems the humour has been toned down so as not to undermine the serious parts too much! The problem is quite obvious. Concentrating on two opposing ends of the scale like this doesn't work and ultimately it feels like you are watching a toned down mix of the comedy from the Gene Wilder/Richard Prior movie "Stir Crazy" combined with the serious parts of Stephen King's "The Shawshank Redemption". It certainly isn't as funny as Stir Crazy and comes nowhere near the arguably quite wonderful story behind Shawshank and in all honesty, to make an idea like that work would have taken an inspirational performance behind the camera...which incidentally, this movie doesn't get in case you weren't sure. ;o)

Still, once you get past the rather over-bloated 'setting-up' portion of the movie (which features just one single gag and doesn't do much to introduce the characters in the first 25+ minutes of the movie), "Life" does make for relatively entertaining viewing. I wouldn't say the jokes came thick and fast once life in the blacks only prison camp begins, but it does pick up a little. Ultimately, its the begrudging frienship between Murphy and Lawrence and the banter between them which brings most of the comic relief, but some of the strong supporting cast of quirky characters themselves are pretty entertaining. The hardships of prison life are all but ignored after the initial introductions, instead we are shown the friendship between two men who outwardly pretend to hate each other - the black "Odd Couple" if you will. The movie is played out as a series of events within their time in prison, beginning with a little hard labour and then seemingly becoming more like a holiday camp than a prison with prisoners being given conjugal visiting rights(married or otherwise), talent shows, baseball games and even a barbeque party at one stage! Its the fun parts which are mostly remembered and it all comes across as a nostalgic look back at some good times which prison life seems to be full of in this sanitised Hollywood prison - damn, there aren't even walls!

I have to say this was one of the best movies I've seen Eddie Murphy do for some time, and probably THE best movie performance from Martin Lawrence. Lawrence plays the straight guy to Murphy's motormouth and he is obviously much better suited to this than trying to play the out and out funny role. Murphy on the other hand is probably funnier when he is allowed to let his mouth run riot, as shown by his vocal contribution to Shrek or his outlandish performance in The Nutty Professor(not a favourite of mine I have to say, but it illustrates a point), but seems quite often to appear in movies which rein in those talents. "Life" is very restrictive of his abilities once more allowing him the occasional burst of energy but for the most part forcing him to play it straight. What it does do on the other hand is make him somewhat more watchable for those of us who can only take so much of his jabbering...for me, it was one of the few occasions I've found him watchable. Both he and Lawrence really shine in the final haf an hour when Rick Baker's make-up talents has aged them to 90 years old but until then the script they are given to work with isn't exactly brilliant and director Ted Demme obviously doesn't have much of an eye for comedy, failing to capitalise on some occasionally good ideas. The funniest bits are the (obligatory!) out-takes at the end, which surely says it all really.

All things considered, "Life" is a bit of a strange idea in the first place (Murphy's brainchild by the way) and never really manages to hit any of the targets it aims for - unless the target was to confuse the viewer as to what exactly it was trying to be, say or do! Its not uproariously funny, neither is it particularly poignant and doesn't pack a punch with its social commentary but it is quite entertaining if you're not expecting too much from it. I'm a little at a loss over what the final message behind all this is in the end though: "Without the prejudice these two would have missed out on a beautiful friendship"? "Prison ain't so bad"? "Black people had a FANTASTIC time in the highly prejudiced South and were treated really well in prisons"? Hmmm. Its a little odd in terms of what it all boils down to, so best not to think too hard about what you are watching. Naturally as a comedy(?) it ends on an supposed "up note" and its probably meant to come across as a triumph of friendship over adversity, but its difficult not to think of how much of these two character's lives have been wasted thanks solely for the predjudices in the 30's Deep South and how mutely they seem to accept it... 

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