All of Me (1984)
Directed by Carl Reiner
Just before stubborn millionaire Edwina Cutwater dies, she asks her uptight lawyer, Roger Cobb, to amend her will so that her soul will pass to the young, vibrant Terry Hoskins – but the spiritual transference goes awry. Edwina enters Roger's body instead, forcing him to battle Edwina for control of his own being.
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14 connections, in both directions
What critics compared All of Me to
A riff on classic body-sharing fantasies dating back to Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde — you could also think of it as “All of Me” with aliens — the movie tells a stale, workmanlike origin story, cursorily updated with drive-by references to climate change and fake news, and outfitted with cheaply serviceable visual effects.
It’s a good gimmick, mismatched buddies in one frame, as Steve Martin demonstrated in All of Me (1984).
And the central idea -- a journalist forced to share his body with an alien symbiote, whose presence grants him extraordinary powers -- actually brings to mind less the fringes of the Marvel universe than the 1984 comedy "All of Me," in which Steve Martin and Lily Tomlin found themselves in a similar squabbling predicament.
Think of this as an intensely violent version of “All of Me,” the 1984 comedy in which Lily Tomlin’s soul ends up in Steve Martin’s body.
It reminded me of All of Me, that movie where Steve Martin's body is possessed by Lily Tomlin.
From the moment we hear the inner voice from Melanie, the film derails from its attempt to be a combo rip-off of "The Invasion of the Body Snatchers" mixed with "All of Me," and heads down the path of unintentional laughs.
Ronan is one of our most promising young actresses, but listening to her wrestle for command of her own brain made me yearn for Steve Martin's antic duels with Lily Tomlin in "All of Me." Martin's bisexual split personality spilled out into the way he held himself, the way he walked, and ate, and urinated.
Director Andrew Niccol (who also adapted Meyer’s novel) dramatizes this by having Melanie speak telepathically to Wanderer, who in turn responds with spoken dialogue — which, for a while, gives “The Host” the strange tenor of a 1950s women’s psychodrama crossed with a 1980s body-switching comedy: “The Snake Pit” meets “All of Me.”
And so, with nods to classic comedies of spiritual transmigration like “All of Me” and “Heaven Can Wait,” “Soul” becomes an out-of-body buddy movie, an odd-couple jaunt that slips freely between this world and the next.
Most of the script’s ideas are recycled – or rather, reincarnated – from A Matter of Life and Death and All of Me , but Soul has its own visual elegance, and an appealing line in pet-based humour.
Joe’s plan is to re-enter his body and complete his quest, but before you can say All of Me – or any other body swap movie ever made (there have been loads) – things don’t quite work out the way he wanted.
I don’t think I’ve seen an actor go through such elaborate physical contortions in portraying a man with limited control over his motor functions since Steve Martin in “All of Me.” Also turning in an extraordinary performance is Hill, seemingly borrowing Stanley Tucci ‘s veneers from the “Hunger Games” movies, as DiCaprio’s faithful sidekick.
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And like gender-swapping flicks such as "Switch," "All of Me" and "The Hot Chick," that's exacerbated by suddenly being in the possession of different sorts of body parts.
When you think about it, it’s a little bit strange there’s an entire genre of body-switching movies, from the “Freaky Friday” iterations to “18 Again!” to “All of Me” to “The Change-Up” to “Heaven Can Wait” to “Face/Off” to “Dream a Little Dream” and you could even include the likes of “Big” and “13 Going on 30” as a sub-genre in which there’s not technically a body switch per se, but a kid is living inside a grown-up’s body.
(He’s on a par with the quality of physical comedy that Steve Martin and Lily Tomlin showed in “All of Me.”)
In a world with “Freaky Friday” (1976, 2003), “Vice Versa” (1988), “All of Me” (1984) – and please don’t forget “Big” (1988) and “13 Going on 30” (2004) too – a deranged sicko switching bodies with a self-esteem-challenged teenage girl is a textbook case of out-of-the-box thinking.
Crowe's portrayal of Nash is initially engaging for its crass belligerence and unintelligible West Virginia cum Wellington (Foghorn Leghorn cum Crocodile Dundee?) mumbled invectives; it degenerates when Crowe loses the accent and affects the twitches and jerks of movie disability (think Steve Martin post-possession in All of Me simultaneously channelling Ratso Rizzo).
Unlike, say, Steve Martin and Lily Tomlin in 1984's excellent body-sharing comedy All of Me , every attempt at a similar situation here -- such as Eddie ducking into a women's bathroom to argue with Venom -- falls completely flat.
Instead of being an exciting comic book movie, director Andy Sirkis and writer Kelly Marcel try turning this into a twisted version of the 1984 Steve Martin/Lily Tomlin comedy All of Me .
At its best, “Venom: Let There Be Carnage” feels like a superpowered version of the minor Steve Martin/Lily Tomlin classic “All of Me.”
Initially it takes time for man and rat to get coordinated, thus leading to the kind of missteps suffered by Steve Martin when his body is occupied by Lily Tomlin’s ghost in the comedy “All of Me.”
Remember when Steve Martin was possessed by Lily Tomlin’s ghost in All of Me ?
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Buckley anchors this thing, delivering a full and nuanced performance which also requires — nay, demands — that she run rampant, like the Batman villain version of Steve Martin and Lily Tomlin in “All of Me.”
What follows is a macabre variation on the Steve Martin-Lily Tomlin comedy "All of Me," as the body runs around butchering people while the brain tries to stop it.