Life Review

Eddie Murphy teams up with Martin Lawrence in this saga of two incarcerated lives and the connections formed over 65 years... the story begins in the early 1930`s with Murphy and Lawrence playing Ray, a con-man and Claude, a potential bank teller. Both are in debt to local gangster Spanky. To pay off their debts they make a bootlegging run to Mississippi and there they`re wrongly convicted of murder and convicted for life. These two ill-matched men bicker their way through unacceptance of their fate to making the best of things... Director Ted Demme makes a rather plodding job of Life. It`s way too long, even taking into account the timespan it covers. Mixing pathos and comedy in a situation where there are not too many laughs is a funny mix for Murphy... he`s half his scatalogical self and half a performer of some conviction in a piece that doesn`t give him much chance to explore his ambitions. Lawrence is ok as the more bitter, more resentful and more real one of the two. The hero of the film is make-up artist Rick Baker who manages to age these two amazingly realistically.