Julian (The Film Seeker)’s review published on Letterboxd:
Mere seconds into Defending Your Life, Albert Brooks ensures that you know exactly whose masterful comedic hands you're in. Before the Geffen Productions logo has even fully materialized from the aether, Brooks's voice is already heard, cracking layered jokes overtop a cynically coded birthday speech. The film that follows is surprisingly far more wholesome than such an acerbic intro might tease, but one thing that remains consistent throughout is that Brooks's comic voice is the buoy that keeps this project afloat.
If Defending Your Life begins to crumble somewhat under the scrutiny of its underdeveloped thematic groundwork, the least Brooks can offer is a showcase for why he's one of the most peerlessly funny people to ever walk this planet—even with its narrative shortcomings, the film could still have pulled off a five-star rating if Steve Martin had shown up as one of the judges or something to unite the Mount Rushmore of comedy. As director, Brooks knows the best way to frame himself as leading actor, providing a platform for his exceptional line deliveries and sharp facial expressions that would read as a vanity move by a filmmaker underplaying his costars to boost is own appearance, were he not just so damn effortlessly good at it all.
Through this comedy, Brooks explores a philosophical corner of life dealing with fulfillment (not at all uncommon for tales of the afterlife) but his particular approach feels admittedly jumbled. Perhaps it comes from the lack of tangible stakes; the worst that could happen to this guy is he's simply reincarnated and forced to live another life. Then again, such an outcome could seem punishment enough for anyone seeking a higher plane of enlightenment, and Defending Your Life presents an affable enough romance between Brooks and an always charming Meryl Streep to make the prospect of their post-purgatory separation sufficiently dire.
And yet, through it all, Albert Brooks maintains that laidback atmosphere so as never to betray his central premise where his thematic grasp might come up short. If Defending Your Life were simply a conceptual showcase for Brooks to spit as many hereafter-themed bars as he could muster, the film would still be worth the price of admission. Beneath the jokes, however, there does lie a deeper desire to own up to the regrets that haunt us behind our shield of humour; Brooks only needed to keep digging to find that coveted compositional balance beam.
