Kevin C. Wong

Eternity (2025) [+]

Eternity is an Apple TV romantic comedy set in the afterlife. At the age of 70-something Larry (Miles Teller) chokes on a pretzel and dies and ends up in the afterlife which turns out to be an underground train-station-slash-hotel. His AC (afterlife coordinator) Anna (Da'Vine Joy Randolph) tells him that after you die you get to choose the Eternity you'll spend in. As such there are many worlds and many sales people trying to get newly dead to choose their right Eternity (a fair amount of humor comes from the various Eternities, like Jane Austen World or Smoker's World, and there are lots of posters that the camera pans by but are not otherwise noted).

Larry though wants to wait for his wife Joan (Elizabeth Olsen) so they can choose an Eternity together. He meets a bartender, Luke (Callum Turner), who is also waiting and that Larry can do the same by getting some sort of job in the afterlife. But later Anna finally convinces Larry to choose an Eternity and if Joan later shows up there then it's Fate. Just in time Joan shows up having died a decade-plus later (I guess time works different in the afterlife).

Great! Larry and Joan are reunited but complication when it turns out Luke is Joan's first husband, a dashing World War II soldier who died overseas. Larry on the other hand seems a bit like a schmuck who caught her on the rebound and from the glimpses we've seen so far maybe not the happiest of marriages. So now Joan has to choose who to live Eternity with (the guys flat out reject Joan's suggestion that all three could share an Eternity) and the next part is her going a date with each where Larry comes off second best.

Eventually Joan chooses Luke and they go off to their Eternity. (Oh I forgot to mention once you go into an Eternity you can't ever come back and if you do they catch you and you end up in Limbo forever.) Joan and Luke have a great time for a couple of weeks then Joan starts to miss Larry. I also forgot that they showed each Eternity has a museum where you can see your past as if watching a play. Joan starts going to the museum every day to relieve her life with Larry and we start to see he was actually a good guy and good to Joan.

Joan decides to come back to afterlife and find Larry even though she'll probably fail and end up in Limbo...

It's a small budget film ($12M which seems low considering the sets and effects) and a nice story. Elizabeth Olsen is good. Miles Teller can be suitably uncharming and charming. Callum Turner pulls off the clean-cut 1940's male. The ending is satisfying. Kind of like with Fly Me to the Moon the concept I wasn't sure of but it turned out well.