![]() ![]() ![]() The early scenes move well (although why was it necessary to send all the way to Mississippi for moonshine, when New York was awash in bootleg booze during Prohibition?). The cheat is found dead Claude and Ray are framed by the sheriff who actually killed him and given life in prison. The trip takes them into Jim Crow land, where Claude is outspoken and Ray more cautious in a segregated diner that serves "white-only pie.'' Then they find the moonshiner, load the truck and allow themselves to get distracted by a local sin city, where Ray loses all his money to a cheat ( Clarence Williams III) and Claude goes upstairs with a good-time girl. ![]() They both find themselves in big trouble with Spanky, the club owner (Rick James), who is in the process of drowning Claude when Ray saves both their lives by talking them into a job: They'll drive a truck to Mississippi and pick up a load of moonshine. When was the last time that a movie made prison seem almost pleasant? "Life'' opens in 1932 in a Harlem nightclub, with a chance encounter between a bank teller named Claude (Lawrence) and a pickpocket named Ray (Murphy). Murphy created the original story line, and Ted Demme ("The Ref'') follows his lead the result is a film that almost seems nostalgic about what must have been a brutal existence. And yet the more you think about it, the more peculiar the movie seems. The movie is ribald, funny and sometimes sweet, and well acted by Murphy, Lawrence and a strong supporting cast. "Life Is Beautiful'' avoids it through comic inspiration, and "Life'' by never quite admitting how painful its characters' lives must have been. It's an odd, strange film-a sentimental comedy with a backdrop of racism-and I kept thinking of "Life Is Beautiful,'' another film that skirts the edge of despair. Eddie Murphy and Martin Lawrence age more than 50 years in "Life,'' the story of two New Yorkers who spend their adult lives on a Mississippi prison farm because of some very bad luck. ![]()
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