Death Becomes Her 1992

Death Becomes Her understands that eternal youth would be wasted on well-adjusted people. Give it to two women who would rather suffer catastrophic bodily damage than let the other one win. Now we have a movie.

Meryl Streep and Goldie Hawn make vanity look like an Olympic event, and both intend to leave with gold. Streep’s Madeline has the brittle confidence of someone who considers applause a basic utility. Hawn’s Helen can turn a smile into a threat without moving anything else. They’re ridiculous, vicious, exquisitely petty, and the film is smart enough to let them be funny instead of demanding that they become inspirational.

Meanwhile, Bruce Willis commits to being the dampest man in the room. It’s a wonderful performance precisely because he refuses to compete with them for glamour. Somebody has to look like they’ve just received another email.

Then Isabella Rossellini appears, looking like the terms and conditions of an expensive mistake. Her immortality pitch is basically skincare marketing with better lighting and considerably worse aftercare.

The body horror works because beauty becomes a maintenance problem. You can stop aging, apparently, but you still need repairs. There’s something very funny about achieving the impossible and immediately discovering that you’ve acquired another chore.

Not every joke is equally sharp. Some of the weight-related material is pretty lazy, especially beside performances this specific. The movie is much better when it targets the desperation underneath the glamour than when it settles for pointing at a body.

But the combination of grotesque slapstick, immaculate nastiness, and two women treating mutual destruction as a shared hobby is hard to beat. Robert Zemeckis gives them a glossy little nightmare where looking fabulous and being miserable can coexist indefinitely.

Honestly, the potion should come with a warning: eternal life, same bullshit. No refunds, obviously.