Afterlife of the Party

Afterlife of the Party

Victoria Justice can stay in heaven for a while longer “Afterlife of the Party,” a Netflix comedy that is loud and unoriginal.

The former Nickelodeon star brings all her sitcom cheer to Cassie, a beautiful but self-absorbed party girl who dies in a freak accident the morning after throwing an epic 25th birthday bash. Instead of going to heaven or hell, she finds herself in The In Between think tastefully furnished purgatory. But even though journeyman director Stephen Herek (“Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure,” “Mr. Holland’s Opus,” “Rock Star”) and writer Carrie Freedle aim for broad physical comedy as well as heartstring-tugging poignancy, they achieve neither, landing at an awkward middle distance all their own.

Cassie (Justice) is super high energy right off the bat in one of those trying on clothes montages that only exist in movies. Dancing around her living room in a pink tulle skirt and rhinestone choker, she tells her roommate and lifelong best friend Lisa (Midori Francis), “I have to ring in 25 with style!” But vapid Cassie seems to have rung in many previous years with such style, and it’s hard to believe how introverted Lisa has stayed so quiet for so long.

“I’m really focused on work right now and I can’t have any distractions,” insists the young archaeologist, who mentions something about studying dinosaur marsupial teeth that is too complicated for flighty Cassie to understand.

A blow-up during their big night out lays bare the cracks between these two soul sisters when Cassie shoots shots atop the bar and Lisa feels left behind. “You know that these people are terrible, right?” Lisa says about Cassie’s new friends. “You’re different when you’re with them.” Indeed and Francis’ authenticity and soulfulness make you wish she were at the center of this movie instead of stuck on the sidelines.

Yet Cassie will be forced to take stock when she wakes up a year later and meets her wisecracking guardian angel, Val (a wryly funny Robyn Scott), who informs her that she’s dead and has only a few days to make things right on Earth in order to earn her way into The Above. Specifically, she must reconcile with her estranged yoga-instructor father (Adam Garcia) and the mother who walked out to find herself when Cassie was a child (Gloria Garcia).

And naturally she must repair things with Lisa, which involves helping her hook up with their cute and equally bashful next-door neighbor (Timothy Renouf, in charmingly flummoxed Hugh Grant mode). Cassie’s favorite part of this process is getting to wear whatever she wants each day, and while the visual effects here are cheesy in an early aughts kind of way, it speaks well of her eventual growth that she goes from initially selecting a silver micro-mini dress that looks like a disco ball to soft pastel florals suggesting some substance has been acquired.

The thought of having another opportunity to tell the people you love what you really feel is timeless as well as irresistible in film. Starting from “It’s a Wonderful Life” through “Heaven Can Wait” (and Chris Rock’s redo “Down to Earth”) to “Ghost” and TV’s “The Good Place,” it has been a pretty reliable territory that movies have been treading on.

However, even though it fails to emotionally resonate, “Afterlife of the Party” still stands its ground. Those truths are superficial and rushed during the time Cassie shares them with those people she loves most especially one with her mother against whom she bears the deepest grudge. It is filled with awkward smiles and jumpy pacing like everyone wants nothing more than finishing up quickly before going home. Similarly, her divorced parents’ eventual reconciliation appears perfunctory and lacks the punch it seeks.

Meanwhile, Koop a role played by a bland pop star called Justice (singer-songwriter Spencer Sutherland) is particularly forced which highlights the glossy nature of this whole endeavor. However striking screen presence that Justice may have had, there was only so much she could do with less heavenly material.

Watch Afterlife of the Party For Free On Gomovies.