Stream It Or Skip It?

Cheers to Life (now on Netflix) implies that, if you’re going to raise a glass to something, it might as well be, well, everything. This typically generically titled Netflix outing is a Brazilian comedy starring Thati Lopes as a hard-ish-luck young woman who chases a whim to Israel to find her only living relatives – but what else will she find? Beautiful scenery? Comical situations? Unexpected love? Or maybe even… herself? 

The Gist: Jessica (Lopes) is a lousy salesperson of antiques. She tries to send a pricey ’60s-era necklace home with a woman but stupidly torpedoes the deal by mentioning how it’ll remind everyone of the police state Brazilians used to live in. Her grumpy boss shakes his head and she goes home to an eviction notice and a notable lack of electricity. Well, shit. Next, we see a black-and-white flashback to happier times, when Jessica was a kid and her mother gives her a locket that she now treasures. It’s all she has left of her mom, who died young, leaving her with no living relatives. The next day at work, she digs through a box of creepy old dolls and ugly urns and ancient vibrators – please laugh – and comes across a locket just like hers. Curious!

And so Jessica tries to track down the former owner of the vibrators and such, leading her to the non-former owner of the vibrators and such, Gabriel (Rodrigo Simas), who just so happens to look great in a tank top – and just so happens to become single as we watch his statuesque model girlfriend kick him out. Gabriel takes Jessica to his mother for some potential locket-sourcing information, and Jessica learns some juicy truths: her grandmother, Hava, is very much alive. Decades ago, in black-and-white flashbacks, Hava ran away from an arranged marriage to Ben, her true love, who motorcycled her off to bliss. They live in Tel Aviv now. And now is when Jessica steals the aforementioned pricey necklace and sells it so she can fly to Israel, ostensibly to claim her inheritance, but also kinda to find her only living family, but mostly because, if she doesn’t, there wouldn’t be much of a movie.

It’s worth noting that Jessica cons Gabriel into going with her, promising him a cut of her probable inheritance. They determine that, what with one thing and another, they’re technically cousins, so they probably shouldn’t smush genitals, in spite of what their itchy, aching loins are telling them. Jessica learns her grandfather owns a vacation-tour company, which is great, because now the movie can show us all the most beautiful sights in Israel, from King Solomon’s Mines to the Wailing Wall. They buy some tickets and track down Grandpa Ben (Jonas Bloch), but Jessica purposely doesn’t tell him she’s his granddaughter, smartly realizing that she’s in One Of Those Plots. Ben reveals that he’s freshly heartbroken, because Hava (Regina Braga) just left him because he once promised her a life full of adventure, only to become a boring old man who’s way too obsessed with soup. No, really! I toldja this was One Of Those Plots. So Jessica, Gabriel and Ben set off to find her, so this Plot can get frickin’ Resolved.

What Movies Will It Remind You Of?: Cheers to Life apparently wants to be a wackier, genealogical version of Eat Pray Love, since it drops that title in the dialogue.

Performance Worth Watching: Lopes’ genial presence is the movie’s best asset, despite its frustrating bevy of cliches. Give her and Simas a better script and then we’re talking.

Memorable Dialogue: Hava’s opening narration implies storytelling depth that the movie never reaches: “People can’t find their destination unless they first know where they came from. It’s only by understanding our past that we can get a glimpse of our future.”

Sex and Skin: One-third of a butt crack during a nude-swimming bit; PG-13 clothes-on facemashing. 

Our Take: Spoiler alert: I don’t think Jessica “finds herself” in this movie. There just isn’t enough of her to find, sadly. The characters in Cheers to Life travel far and wide not to become better versions of themselves (if they do, it happens by accident), but to reach the conclusion of the plot. And some of the world’s most ancient and sacred destinations are naught but checkpoints on a loose-goose chase elongated by the characters’ nonsensical decisions and various digressions – a flamboyant tour guide, social media influencer nuns, melodramatic flashbacks with bad wigs, misc. slapstick – that theoretically lend comedy to the proceedings. 

But it’s all too familiar and predictable, even with all the cousin-f—ing jokes. It’s never funny enough. And the drama lacks the earnestness and character detail to be emotionally resonant. The annoying, “quirky” score, which telegraphs and mirrors every move the characters make, only adds to the convoluted who-caresiness of it all. The film is content to trot out cliches, finding excuses in the plot for characters to follow their hearts instead of letting them, you know, exist like normal, recognizable human-being people. Instead, it feels like a sightseeing trip whose destination is so thick with goopy sentiment, we nearly choke on it. 

Our Call: Sneers to Life. SKIP IT.

John Serba is a freelance writer and film critic based in Grand Rapids, Michigan.