Philip French 

Up There – review

Heaven is a rundown Scottish seaside resort in this patchy black comedy, writes Philip French
  
  

up there
Paradise lost: Burn Gorman (left) and Aymen Hamdouchi in Up There. Photograph: PR

Ever since Leslie Howard appeared in Outward Bound, a 1930 film version of Sutton Vane's stage success about recently deceased folk on a boat bound for heaven or hell, there's been a steady stream of movies about the afterlife; very serious in the case of Roman Polanski inducting Gerard Depardieu into purgatory in A Pure Formality, larky in the case of Peter O'Toole and Colin Firth awaiting Charon's ferry together in Wings of Fame. Up There is a modest black comedy starring Burn Gorman as a road-accident victim attempting unsuccessfully to get out of his job as a minder of the newly dead and move onward and upward in a dull, bureaucratic afterlife. Instead he gets stuck in a rundown Scottish seaside resort. It runs out of steam very early on but should be compulsory viewing for would-be suicide bombers who think they're going to be living in a paradise populated by beautiful virgins.

 

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