Review: Elizabeth Olsen, Callum Turner and Miles Teller lead clever, charming ‘Eternity’

Eternity: love, death and a cosmic choice

“Eternity” is a high‑concept screwball comedy in which Joan Cutler, played by Elizabeth Olsen, dies and is given one week in the afterlife to decide which of her two husbands she wants to spend eternity with. One is Luke (Callum Turner), the magnetic first love who died young in war, and the other is Larry (Miles Teller), the fretful, ordinary man with whom she shared a 65‑year marriage.

Setting and afterlife rules

Most of the film unfolds in the Junction, a deliberately bland, brutalist hotel‑and‑convention‑center where the newly dead arrive to sort out their eternity. Afterlife coordinators, including characters played by Da’Vine Joy Randolph and John Early, explain a menu of themed destinations such as Paris‑style “lands,” Studio‑54‑like party worlds, mountain retreats and even a toned‑down Weimar World, with the crucial rule that once a choice is made it cannot be undone.

Joan, Larry and Luke before death

The film flashes back to Joan and Larry late in life, bickering on the way to a family gathering about whether to take a beach vacation, which Larry wants, or go to the mountains, which Joan prefers. Their long marriage looks tired and duty‑bound, with Joan terminally ill from cancer and Larry determined to care for her, right up until he unexpectedly dies first.

Luke, by contrast, is the romantic ideal frozen in memory, having died during the Korean War just as the couple’s future together was beginning. His heroic, unfinished story fuels Joan’s sense that life with him represents passion and possibility rather than routine.

Performances and character dynamics

Olsen plays Joan as an “old soul” in a young body, with a nervous, mid‑century comedic energy reminiscent of Diane Keaton. In one standout scene, Joan and Larry laugh uncontrollably as they revel in the simple physical joy of being able to crouch and jump again in their renewed afterlife bodies.

Teller leans into Larry’s underdog status, giving an unshowy performance that earns sympathy even as the character absorbs most of the jokes and verbal jabs. Turner’s Luke is intentionally less fleshed out, a charming Robert Redford‑like figure who feels slightly underwritten because he is literally stuck at the age he died, with a running gag that his war was definitely not World War II.

Themes and tone

The script plays Joan’s dilemma for both heart and farce, contrasting the comforting predictability of a long marriage with the lure of an unfinished, idealized romance. The comedy comes from the absurd bureaucracy of the afterlife and from the rivalry between two men who must confront what they meant to Joan, while the film quietly asks whether either of them is truly the right partner for her eternity.

Some of the film’s criticism centers on pacing, particularly that it takes too long to raise the possibility that Joan’s best option might be to choose herself rather than either husband. Nevertheless, the overall tone is warm and playful, more interested in emotional insight and second chances than in metaphysical heaviness.

Style and direction

Director David Freyne blends classic romantic‑comedy tropes with a gently satirical vision of the afterlife, echoing films that poke fun at cosmic bureaucracy while still rooting everything in human feeling. The result is a film that feels like a modern screwball romance, using fantastical stakes to explore everyday questions about love, resentment and the weight of shared history.

Joan Cutler has an impossible decision to make: spend eternity with the dependable husband who stayed or the first love who never got the chance.

Author’s summary

A witty afterlife rom‑com where Elizabeth Olsen’s Joan must choose between long‑term loyalty and frozen‑in‑time first love, “Eternity” charms with its performances and playful cosmic bureaucracy.

The Seattle Times — 2025-11-28