A serious movie that also happens to be pretty funny, July 10, 2004

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Daniel Jolley “darkgenius” (Shelby, North Carolina USA) – See all my reviews

  

  

  

Yes, this movie has plenty of funny moments, but there is a very real and sometimes rather touching story that takes precedence over everything that happens. You can’t get through the most serious of situations without the palliative of laughter now and again, and Life actually does tell a serious story. Eddie Murphy proves once again that he is a great actor, and Martin Lawrence was surprisingly good as the more serious of two men sentenced to life in prison for a murder they didn’t commit. One night in 1932, fate brought Rayford Gibson (Murphy), a smooth-talking hustler with big dreams, and Claude Banks (Lawrence) a respectable fellow about to start a good job, together in a New York nightclub. For entirely different reasons, both guys have to face the displeasure of the club owner’s wrath; and so it is that Gibson and Banks end up going on a bootlegging run to Mississippi. One dead man later, and both men are sentenced to life in prison for murder. Since Banks blames Gibson…

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One of the very best comedies of ’99, October 27, 1999

I’ve seen "Life" twice thus far, and I must concede that it has to be one of the best films to ever cast Eddie Murphy. He and Martin Lawrence are just as emotionally poignant as they are downright hysterical in this memorable comedy/drama of two Prohibition-era guys from Harlem NYC who inadvertently become framed for murder in the Deep South while on a bootlegging run for the local crime boss they each owe debts to back home. They are soon enough sentenced to life imprisonment in a Mississippi chain gang where they share a "Felix and Oscar"-esque relationship that spans 65 years through thick and thin times (including numerous escape attempts). However in the end, they literally become friends for life as they come to terms with their imprisonment. The make-up done by 6-time Oscar winner Rick Baker to transform Murphy & Lawrence from young to old over the course of so many years is the true showstopper of "Life". I wouldn’t be the…

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Not the aggressive Lawrence/Murphy humor; still a good movie, August 11, 2002

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Eric V. Moye (New York, by way of Dallas) – See all my reviews

  

I did enjoy this movie, even as I enjoyed Martin Lawrence and Eddie Murphy’s more popular and critically acclaimed work. They are a pair of convicts, one of whom caught up after being “along for the ride”, but jailed nonetheless for life in the South some fifty years ago. They do persevere after, through and despite any number of bad (some unbelievable) circumstances. Life in prison makes them close.

It is very different from my other favorite prison movie, Cool Hand Luke. Like C.H.L., the brutality of prison life is left mercifully for other films. There is one scene common to both, though, with the prisoners resolving their issue boxing in the prison yard with typical results.

As they age, their mutual disappointment makes their friendship ebb and flow from like to dislike and back (of course). Conservative Lawrence (yeah, him) not only blames the typically hustling Murphy for getting him into the situation in the first place. Murphy wants more assertiveness from his…

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