Life After Beth (2014) Directed by Jeff Baena

Getting a movie like this right actually is incredibly difficult. You need to find a right balance between all of the different comedy, drama and horror elements in order for the movie to work out as an effective. And well, they definitely tried but no, they never managed to find a good and right balance in my opinion.

And that's really the foremost with this movie. Because it tries to blend multiple different genres in with each other the movie just never becomes effective enough as a drama, not funny enough for a comedy and definitely never scary enough for a convincing horror/zombie movie. Every time that the drama starts to develop something goofy and unlikely happens in the story, which ruins the drama again and every time that the movie starts to develop into something genuinely funny, the drama kicks in again which again takes out most of the fun out of the movie.

It's not just the mixture of things but also the story itself is definitely a lacking one in my opinion. It just seems to lack a good point and it just meanders on, which was done very deliberately, since this movie is obviously trying to be as 'small', simplistic and straightforward as possible but that in this case unfortunately also means that there isn't an awful lot of depth to anything. It never becomes an heartfelt or cute enough movie and it never works out as an engaging enough one, which is mainly due to its main premise in my opinion.

The movie of course features a totally ridicules main premise but the movie itself actually approaches most things in a very grounded and realistic way, which often is in too big contrast with its silly story and unlikely events. The movie is a mostly subtle one with its storytelling and characters yet all of the comedy is terribly over-the-top.

It maybe sounds like I absolute hate this movie but that really isn't the case though. Thing about it just is that it isn't ever fully working out in the way that it was obviously supposed to. I still got some enjoyment out of the movie and there also still are some things about it that I respect and truly admire.

One of those things definitely is the acting. I especially liked Aubrey Plaza's and John C. Reilly's performances and it's good to see how all of the actors understood what type of movie they were in. Most of their performances are goofy yet restrained and played straight at the same time as well. It's not an easy thing to do and some actors would have taken things over-the-top instead but not most of the actors who were involved with this movie though. The performances, generally speaking, are pretty good and definitely suit the style and approach of the movie.

I admire the attempt and it's absolutely not a bad movie to watch but it's not as great and unique as it potentially could have been ant it's also not a movie that I would wholeheartedly recommend to just everyone.

6/10

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