Just a Taste of Heaven

I got a little taste of a bit of heaven watching A Little Bit of Heaven. Basically, it’s about dying. Basically, it’s about life. So it's life+death=life-death. Apparently, you can’t die, even if you die. Because dying means you live. That’s basically (God, I need to stop ‘basicking’ here), the moral of the whole movie is that death means living. OK, I’m not trying to say that this movie is not depressing or sad. Basically (ouch) Kate Hudson is so vivacious in the whole movie that you’d think you were going to get depressed if she died (along with the vivacity). The fact is-she dies in the movie (which actually happens at the end of the movie). But the fact that she gets sick throughout the whole movie makes you think that she should just drop dead to spare us the misery. But at the same time, it’s depressing. So it’s a lose-lose situation.

Marley aka Kate Hudson is such a boisterous woman who thinks that life is just perfect. That is … until she discovers she has colon cancer, and it’s terminal. So basically (ouch, ouch, ouch), Marley becomes unhappy to find out that she has cancer, and that she doesn’t have long to live. So she starts splurging on things for her friends, and tries to live as though she were dying (which in fact, she is).

And of course, she falls in love with Julian, the so-called charming doctor who diagnosed her. Actually, it’s probably the other way around. Julian falls in love with her, and she falls in love with him. Or maybe they actually fall in love head over heels for each other simultaneously? But the fact remains that the two of them has feelings for each other. And Julian doesn’t mind if he’s falling in love with a terminal patient, because when you’re in love, I guess terminal is like a small wound or something.

So the two begin dating each other, and in the process, Marley teaches Julian how to just chill out and not be a boring old doctor. Basically (ouch, ouch, ouch, ouch), Marley teaches Julian how to live a life, and shows him that life is great when you know how to live it.

But Marley has her own inhibitions. She has her own demons that she has to battle. She doesn’t really have a close relationship with her father, and even though you see her as bright and chirpy throughout the whole movie, she does have her moments when she bursts. But dying has been a painful process for Marley, and eventually, her relationship with her father is patched up.

And the thing about this movie is, death is a celebration of live. Marley’s family and friends are really grieved about Marley’s impending death, and there is nothing they can do to help her. But Marley wants her funeral to be celebrated with jazzy music, as though she were alive. And she doesn’t want sad and somber faces in her funeral. She wants everybody to celebrate her life in the other world. That’s her request before she dies.

So in a way, I wasn’t really that moved to sadness watching this whole movie. Because Kate Hudson, who is dying, is not really dying. She’s living. That’s the whole important lesson here. Marley is going to be living when she dies. And at the end of the movie, everybody just dances at her funeral with upbeat music. Marley’s mother is sad, but she tries not to show it. This is the first time I actually see a funeral being held in such a manner that sorts of mocks all typical funerals. It’s just different, but nobody is feeling guilty about it, because Marley wants it that way.

The movie is just a lemon juice. It’s like drinking a fresh cup of lemon, and feeling refreshed after that. I rate this movie 6.7/10 (which is actually quite good already) because it’s not a bad movie, but it’s not totally a mind-blowing movie or life-changing movie that totally sticks to your senses permanently. But it’s good, and it’s worth a popcorn crunch with friends in the theater.

The few weeks have been a hell of bad movies. But I finally got a bit of taste of heaven with this one.