If You’re Missing ‘The Good Place,’ You Need to Watch ‘Defending Your Life’

The afterlife is a tricky space to maneuver — especially when it comes to cinematic adaptations of the what lies beyond the Pearly Gates. Is the Great Beyond filled with jazz, sparks, and orbs named Jerry? Or, what in the world do those flatliners see in the split second of life after death? In Albert Brooks’s Defending Your Life, for example, recently dead humans march their souls into court and fight for the opportunity to move onto the next world. If they’ve shown enough bravery, they ascend. If not, they’ll be damned back to Earth to try again. Today marks the 30th anniversary of Defending Your Life making its way into movie theaters (remember those?), so it’s time to revisit the divine romantic comedy and dive into the existentialism of it all.

Defending Your Life is directed, written, and starring Brooks, and follows his schlubby character Daniel in the days that follow his very last on Earth. After his death, Daniel enters the not-so-pearly gates of Judgement City, a purgatory land where mortals don togas and wage arguments against demonic prosecutors. Paired with a lawyer, two judges, and strapped into a chair, here, Daniel will defend his boring life. As if death wasn’t enough, now, he’ll relive segments of his life as if it were a Netflix film. Sounds …overwhelming, to say the least. Luckily, he comes across the soft, level-headed Julia (Meryl Streep), the perfect foil to his stubborn, often disappointing blubbery.

It’s awfully similar to Michael Schur’s recent sitcom The Good Place. The plot synopsis of that show, for the unfamiliar: Eleanor (Kristen Bell) dies when, like Daniel, she’s rammed by a large moving object while distracted by a vice (margaritas). When she wakes, she’s in “The Good Place,” paired with her soulmate Chidi (William Jackson Harper) and gifted with dozens of free shrimp cocktails. Heavenly, yes, but it turns out they’re actually in The BAD Place, all an experiment orchestrated by Michael (Ted Danson), a demon. Swap the genders, and you’ve got Eleanor as Daniel, Chidi as Julia, and The Good/Bad Place as Judgement City — two afterlives for the ages.

Neither paradise is technically “Heaven,” but they’re still equally enthralling as concepts of the afterworld. Again, Defending Your Life’s Judgement City has a strict toga dress code; why we don’t have this in the real life is beyond me. Then, there’s this incredible scene where Daniel pops into a diner in the celestial city. He orders a huge breakfast, his waiter doling out plate after plate of omelets, toast, hash browns, fruit, a milkshake — just an endless stream of food. Trams are everywhere. Everyone lives in super clean hotels that look like Kanye West’s all-white house. It’s kind of like Disney World meets Vegas, in the best way possible. Who knows? Maybe the real afterworld looks like this.

The Good Place has Janet (D’Arcy Carden), a magical robot who can whip anything into fruition with the snap of a finger. Want fro-yo? Here’s strawberry cheesecake flavor, with every topping. Longing for a new couch? There it is, already built! Cool gadgets whir and whiz through The Good Place endlessly. Each episode unfurls a new layer to the blueprints behind the afterlife, a locale that actually looks, dare I say it, inviting. While the burdens of existentialism are certainly no fun, there’s a certain thrill in watching the needlework pull together two varied afterlife tapestries in The Good Place and Defending Your Life.

That’s not even the best part. Sure, traversing the boundless afterlife may captivate you, but the love stories will floor you. Both Defending Your Life and The Good Place are rom-coms at their core, following the messed up afterlife shenanigans of Daniel, Julia, Eleanor, and Chidi. Where does one even begin in the realm of post-death dating? While Daniel seems destined to return to Earth, Julia will probably ascend onwards. Earth to the Heavens — talk about long distance. And yet, their connection pushes Daniel to tear down the barriers he’s built around himself, to become a better person. It just stinks that he found it in the afterlife. Nevertheless, these couples feel like perfect soulmates. They’ve defied space and time in finding each other.

This film, along with the entirety of The Good Place, makes a great case for existentialism in rom-coms. And existentialism isn’t limited to the afterlife, think rom-coms like Palm Springs and Groundhog Day too. By blending philosophy into the cheeriest genre of them all, these movies and shows invite deeper conversations that don’t get way too dark. They’re lovely. But they also carry complex discussions about the meaning of life, love, and, soulmates.

In the craziness that is life (moreover, life after death), it’s both uplifting and hilarious to think that one person may help us get through everything together. While The Good Place spanned over four epic seasons, all good things must come to an end. Nevertheless, return to the source material, Defending Your Life — and root for more existential rom-coms. It’s certainly a niche genre, but it’s one of the very best.

Fletcher Peters is a pop culture writer and rom-com obsessive based in New York. Alongside Decider, she’s written for Paste Magazine, Film School Rejects, Jezebel, and elsewhere. 

Where to stream Defending Your Life

Where to stream The Good Place