Tuesday

Last night I went to another double feature at the Broadway starting with Tuesday.  I was really intrigued when I saw the trailer for this but, unfortunately, it was not what I was expecting.  Death, in the form of a size-shifting talking macaw (voiced by Arinze Kene), appears to a terminally ill teen named Tuesday (Lola Petticrew).  Death is accustomed to hearing all of the inner thoughts of everyone who is about to die but, when he meets Tuesday, all of the noise stops and he is so grateful he allows her time to say goodbye to her mother Zora (Julia Louis-Dreyfus) before she dies.  Tuesday comes to view Death as a friend (in some truly bizarre sequences) but Zora, who has distanced herself emotionally from Tuesday because she is unable to cope and is in deep denial about her prognosis, is angry and lashes out at Death.  However, her interactions with Death (in some even more bizarre sequences) help her find understanding then acceptance and, finally, peace.  Louis-Dreyfus gives a powerful and affecting performance in a more dramatic role than we usually see from her and I liked the use of a bird as an allegory for death (even if the CGI is sometimes messy) because it is very imaginative.  I also loved the message that death is just a natural part of life and that we honor those who have died by living life to the fullest in their memory.  My biggest problem is that the tone is very inconsistent with some scenes that are so jarring they took me out of the emotional core of the narrative.  I liked the concept of this movie more than the execution.