; Bonus points in that one of the Game Shows in Judgment City is called "Face Your Fear". Sign up for our newsletter. Defense lawyer Bob Diamond (Rip Torn is a sassy wonder in the role) tells Daniel he’ll be judged on how well he’s faced down his fears in life. The primary goal of the deceased. Brooks wants laughs but not at the expense of character or nuance. Daniel Miller (Brooks) dies in a car wreck and finds himself in a very Earth-like purgatory called Judgment City. Let us know what you think of the Last.fm website. Here’s that rare movie find: a comedy of mind, heart and a merry sense of malice. Allen Daviau’s muted cinematography and David Finfer’s editing are never intrusive. Defending Your Life is the 4th episode of Season 7. Here, he is given a defense attorney, Bob Diamond (Rip Torn), who informs him that he will have to defend Daniel's life by presenting Daniel's past in a trial over whether or not Daniel can Ascend to a Higher Plane of Existence or if he should be sent back to face his fears. To help the judges decide, selected film clips from Daniel’s life are shown in court. But Judgment City isn’t hell; it’s merely a pit stop where the dead go for a few days to defend their lives in court. When yuppie Albert Brooks crashes his BMW and dies, what's his first stop? Brooks may look as ordinary as a baked potato, but he’s honed his deadpan style into a lively and expressive comic instrument. If Daniel pleases the court, he’ll move on as a citizen of the universe; if he doesn’t, he’ll be sent back to earth. Daniel has already had twenty lifetimes (you remember only the last one) and hasn’t learned much; he’s still using only three percent of his brain. He’s always anticipating the worst. Daniel faces several of his at once on the bus back to getting reincarnated by hopping off and running all the way to Julia's bus. Want more Rolling Stone? It’s dirty pool to reveal the substance of the clips, including a compilation reel of 164 of Daniel’s stupider misjudgments, but there are few sights more riotous than watching him squirm through each of them. Some user-contributed text on this page is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License; additional terms may apply. DOCUMENTARIES. Permissions beyond the scope of this license may be available from thestaff@tvtropes.org. Catalogs. ): a fully thought-through purgatory, both practical and pleasant. In his own work (Real Life, Modern Romance, Lost in America) and even when he acts in other films (Taxi Driver, Private Benjamin and, most notably, Broadcast News), the prototypal Brooks character makes anxiety a way of life. DOCUMENTARIES. Connect your Spotify account to your Last.fm account and scrobble everything you listen to, from any Spotify app on any device or platform. He nearly did, even admitting outright he was afraid to be in a relationship with Julia because he felt he wouldn't be moving on with her. Brooks is a clown with a black cloud over his head. Do you know the lyrics for this track? In Defending Your Life, he gets it. Driving his BMW convertible while singing along to a CD of Barbra Streisand show tunes (“I got a feeling there’s a miracle due, gonna come true, coming to me”), Daniel collides fatally with a bus making mincemeat of himself and Babs’s blaring optimism. View credits, reviews, tracks and shop for the 1991 CD release of Defending Your Life (Original Motion Picture Soundtrack) on Discogs. Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License. Ending Type: Earn Your Happy Ending. For the wishy-washy Brooks, it's a tough sell, but he brightens considerably when he meets and falls in love with Meryl … Then she tripped over a lounge chair and into the pool, drowning even when she'd been a good swimmer. And her romantic sparring with Brooks has a piercing sweetness. Daniel manages to make his judges chuckle and smile at his jokes, proving as Julia says that humor has no relation to brain size. Defending Your Life. Remember, Daniel and Julia are put on buses: Daniel's bus is going to back to Earth while Julia's is going to the next phase of existence. Judgment City, of course, where he has to defend the choices he made in life. Julia’s film clips are also a shock to Daniel – she’s Joan of Arc to his Cowardly Lion. ; Fantastic Racism: Typical humans use less then seven percent of their brain. We want to hear from you! You can’t see it, but it’s there. Go directly to shout page, Do you have any photos of this artist? A 1991 fantasy Romantic Comedy written/directed by/starring Albert Brooks and co-starring Meryl Streep. The actual days had almost no bearing on Daniel's judgment. They all work for the Universe, and while Bob and Lena don't like each other, it's implied he and Lena collaborated to make Daniel frustrated and nervous about his fate as a, use less than seven percent of their brain. Instead, she gives the part a relaxed reading that makes her crack timing even more impressive. Julia and Daniel quickly hit it off, but while Daniel asserts he has no more fears and he's ready to move on, his romance with Julia begins raising some doubts... TVTropes is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License. There are no gods or devils in his hereafter, just the usual banal bureaucrats, petty fears and relationships that are a bitch to sustain. Except for sharing Daniel’s skewed sense of humor, Julia is everything he is not: secure, well adjusted, heroic. At the time, MacLaine was best known for believing in resurrection and past lives. Instead, proving he would risk everything to be with Julia proved he'd conquered his fears. It’s not a huge role, and Streep wisely doesn’t try to stretch it. Lena. It aired on October 14th, 2011. Forget the mood-shattering feel-good ending; Brooks slouches toward it as if he knew it was bogus. Add lyrics on Musixmatch. Javascript is required to view shouts on this page. “When I see you,” Daniel tells Julia, “I instantly feel okay.”. Add an image, Do you know any background info about this artist? By the end of Defending Your Life, Daniel may have broken through his fears, but Brooks the comic maestro seems all but paralyzed. “When you use more than five percent,” says Diamond (who’s been clocked at forty-eight percent), “you don’t want to be on earth, believe me.”. It’s Brooks’s vision of hell. When she invites him to her bed, Daniel resists. Hmm, it looks like we don’t know much about this track. Leave it to Albert Brooks to make dying both stressful and funny. Joan Baez on the 2020 Election and Painting Portraits for Social Change, Trump Brags About Supporters Harassing Biden Campaign Bus, Video: Trump Supporters Allegedly Tried to Run Biden Bus ‘Off the Road’, Trump Will Declare Victory Before All Votes Are Counted, Report Says, Don’t Panic If You Missed the Mail-in Ballot Deadline. Until then, Defending Your Life makes a solid case for Albert Brooks as an inspired filmmaker and an incomparable clown. Bob chuckles when Daniel says he met a woman he likes, essentially saying, "You met Miss Right. In this Disneyland for the dead, everyone is resolutely cheerful, and the weather is always seventy-four degrees and perfectly clear. FEATURED MOVIES. © Copyright 2020 Rolling Stone, LLC, a subsidiary of Penske Business Media, LLC. Read about End Credits by Defending Your Life and see the artwork, lyrics and similar artists. Find out where Defending Your Life is streaming, if Defending Your Life is on Netflix, and get news and updates, on Decider. Looking to watch Defending Your Life? Defending Your Life … Daniel then meets Julia (Streep), who led a loving and fulfilling life, but died an untimely death. http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Film/DefendingYourLife. DEFENDING YOUR LIFE: Brooks' vision of the afterlife, "Judgment City," is part Vegas, part L.A., part DisneyWorld, part Universal Studios tour--and a little bit of heaven (you can eat as much as you want and never gain an ounce! Brooks doesn’t offer the comfy escapism of a dream world. Let us know what you think of the Last.fm website. Not only is Daniel dead, he has to face public humiliation, which he sees as a worse fate. Start the wiki, Do you know what kind of music this is? Daniel may be the ultimate Brooks role. Daniel starts noticing that Julia has a better hotel room than he (they put cream-filled chocolate swans on her pillow at night while he gets a box of cheap mints). It's implied that part of her role is to antagonize Daniel as seen in Xanatos Gambit below. When Julia calls out for Daniel, he finally. Daniel faces several of his at once on the bus back to getting reincarnated by hopping off and. Do you know a YouTube video for this track? Catalogs. But not for long. Start the wiki. Next stop for Daniel is Judgment City, where the freshly dead all wear caftans called “tupas” and ride trams between antiseptic hotels, tacky restaurants, amateur comedy clubs and such tourist attractions as the Pavilion of Past Lives. FEATURED MOVIES. In this brilliantly inventive comic fantasy, the writer-director plays Daniel Miller, a divorced L.A. advertising executive. Tag this track. Send us a tip using our anonymous form. Forget the mood-shattering feel-good ending; Brooks slouches toward it as if he knew it was bogus.

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