I have a confession to make….I have never seen this movie before last week. I know, I know, I know! BUT I did see “Death Becomes Her” on Broadway. No, I did not see Michelle Williams because she was out that day, BUT her second in command, as I will call her, did a phenomenal job! Her name is Ximone Rose, and she took my breath away. I might talk a lot about this play because the basis for what I know about this story is from watching the stage play.
Helen Sharp (played by Goldie Hawn) and Madeline Ashton (played by Meryl Streep) are not friends. They are those people who, for some reason, pretend to be friends but secretly hate each other. Why do we as humans do that? There’s no reason for that. Anyway, Helen is engaged to Ernest Menville (played by Bruce Willis), who is not a bright man. Sure, he’s a surgeon, but as the movie progresses, I question his intelligence.
Madeline steals Ernest from Helen, which, in all honesty, wasn’t that hard. They mentioned he was a huge fan of Madeline anyway. Helen goes into a spiral. So much so that she ends up in a mental hospital. Here’s what tickled me. I don’t know if they tell us how long she’d been in there, but she brings up Madeline and everyone, including the other mental patients, groans. They are over it. Even her counselor tells her she has to get over it, but she says something that only crazy people can hear, which gives her the idea to eventually kill Madeline to get her man back. (Honestly, you could have let Madeline have that man, but I digress.)
Now, this is where the movie and play start to differ for me. Someone correct me if I’m wrong, but I think in the play Ernest is still a plastic surgeon but Madeline is doing F-list movies. In the movie, his career takes a slide and he ends up being a mortician. He’s also now an alcoholic…because he’s married to Madeline. There is no other reason I can think of. Anyway, Helen, who is a writer remember, invites the both of them to her book party. Madeline is already doing everything under the sun to keep her youth, but to no avail. I want to stop here. In this movie, Mary Louise Streep is 43 and Goldie Jeanne Hawn is 47. Let that sink in for those who have seen this movie. These women do no look that age! And, at one point, they made Goldie appear overweigh and ugly with their choice of wig. HOW?! How did you try (and succeed with one) to make us as the audience think that these women looked old?!
Anyway, trying to stay on track, Madeline and Ernest go to to the party only to find that Helen is fine. And I don’t just mean Goldie Hawn fine, I mean like FINE FINE! She’s apparently supposed to be 50 but she looks 20 (as Goldie Hawn in real life looked at that time anyway.) It was then that Helen started her revenge plot. It was also around that time when a strange man gave Madeline the card of a women who could restore her youth. Of course, Madeline, desperate to regain her youth, go to see this weird lady, and does go back to being as beautiful as she remembered….but magic always comes with a price. (If you have watched “Once Upon A Time,” you know this line and you know it’s true.)
Isabella Rossellini plays Lisle von Rhuman and this lady is aggressive. I don’t know what she has going on. I don’t know if she was given this potion by the devil and has to sell it to keep her youth, but she was a hell of a saleswoman. She basically shamed Madeline into taking the potion. The version of this woman in the play was not this aggressive. Madeline pays for and takes the potion. She later finds out that Helen did the same….after her battered husband pushes her down the stairs. More high jinxs ensue.
Bruce Willis was the best part of this movie and I will tell you why. Bruce as Ernest had no boundaries, and what I mean by that is he was able to show us low low’s and high high’s with nothing stopping him from going all they way. The ladies, in my opinion, balanced his chaos with each of them occupying a space in-between but still on either side of the spectrum. Helen ended up being a psycho, so we put her at a high. Madeline, while annoying and demanding, was on a low. She was a shell of her former self because her self esteem and career hinged on her beauty. So, where Ernest was all over the place, the movie is balanced by his two leading ladies. It was also nice to see Bruce back in his heyday. We miss seeing him on screen.
What I loved about the play versus the movie was the ending. The ending in the Broadway play focused heavily on the ladies forming a bond with each other because that’s how they used to be when they first met in college. Emphasis was placed on them being all they had. They also allowed Ernest to go about his life with a new wife who wasn’t crazy or abusive. I really enjoyed this girl power moment. The movie also does the same thing but it’s much more subtle. It’s funnier but subtle.
The one question I have for those who have seen the movie is what made it so memorable that someone thought to turn it into a stage play? It wasn’t those graphics. I will tell you that! But, sound off. What do you remember most from this film and have you seen the stage play?
