DEAD AGAIN (1991) ** The script demanded a major overhaul, or at least emphatic interpretation that didn't happen. Instead Kenneth Branagh and his colleagues muddle on through, alternately playful and then expecting the audience to pick things up directly from the last time that they tried to be ominous. There was an opportunity for...at least black slapstick, but it ultimately wasn't taken. So it's neither very funny nor particularly scary. Of course Branagh and Emma Thompson were married at the time, so we might have expected them to generate a bit more during the necessarily inessential romantic bits; but of course they're not married any more, so who really knows what's to blame or is reflected where. Neither of them are particularly convincing, appealing, nor intriguing in a total of four plush roles: acclaimed classical musicians, a superficial gumshoe, and an amnesiac. Should have been something in there to run with, but Robin Williams takes the best scenes instead (as a psychiatrist/hypnotist turned grocery clerk in order to appease karmatic forces). Andy Garcia isn't passable as an internationally acclaimed journalist unless you've met one, in which case much more is probably believable. They're a bit like other improbably celebrated incompetents, aren't they? Lots of visual references to better movies for footnote enthusiasts, but the rest of us would rather watch the better films themselves. The past-life regression stuff is interesting, but never allowed to become more than window dressing.
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