Life
I've heard the harrowing Blues In The Mississippi Night, an illuminating and darkly fascinating spoken word CD released by Rykodisc in which famous bluesmen were interviewed about time they spent in the brutal Mississippi prisons of the 30's. Not a whole lot of laughs.
Still, Life isn't about the reality of life in prison, it just uses the backdrop of prison as the framework to hang an affable buddy comedy. This was done to much better effect in The Shawshank Redemption, but if you can hang reality on a hook outside the theatre, Life is a low-key, sentimental pleasure. Eddie Murphy has been trying far too hard lately, the promising young comic turning into a self-indulgent mug. The overrated Nutty Professor was the last time Murphy even came remotely close to funny, and even then was relying on fart jokes for laughs.
But the kid's growing up a bit, and was willing to share the spotlight with another promising young comic (Martin Lawrence). Murphy put away the manic need to please for Life, which turned out to be a good move. Murphy is genuinely likeable as Ray, as is Lawrence as Claude, because neither comic plays it over the top. Ray is a smooth talking con man who ropes the straight-laced future banker Claude into running a load of moonshine from Mississippi to New York, but the two are framed for a murder while in town and end up serving a life sentence in the bayou.
The two bicker themselves into a friendship over the course of the film, buttressed by a lightly entertaining cast of inmates. There are a few subtle, effective jabs at the Jim Crow laws of the pre-war South, moments of genuine camaraderie between the two men, and if there aren't many sidesplitting laughs, the film is consistently amusing and sometimes sweet, as when Ray describes his vision of a nightclub that he'll open in Harlem. He populates the club with the other inmates in this shared vision, a fantasy which acts as a means of escape where the men dream of playing poker, drinking scotch and eating steak.
Though certainly not riveting, Life offers Murphy's best performance in years, a gently comic side that fits him well. He and Lawrence also act convincingly old as the film follows them through six decades of prison life, helped along by impressive makeup work. The premise is odd, the setup unrealistic (hey kids! Prison ain't so bad!) but the duo's relationship is seasoned with enough sweetness to make the film an understated pleasure.
- Jared O'Connor
MOVIES
All Content © 1997, 1998, 1999 Jared O'Connor and Michael Baker